


evening in the garden, surrounded by fireflies

by echoes_of_realities



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Childhood Friends, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-01-16 12:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12342579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoes_of_realities/pseuds/echoes_of_realities
Summary: Jake really should have known that when Amy Santiago moved in next door she would change his life, even if he was only four at the time.Or: Amy Santiago moves into the vacant house next door one month before her and Jake both turn five, and as chaotic as having seven little boys next door is over the years, Jake can't think of anything in the entire world he wouldn't trade just to see his best friend in the entire world smile when he makes a funny face at her over the crowd of her brothers; even if it means suffering through elementary, middle,andhigh school with her.





	1. I'm so glad fate brought me you (now don't leave me too)

**Author's Note:**

> I started this in September (but like September of 2016...it's been a while) and as far as I knew Amy’s dad hadn’t been revealed to be a cop yet? So while writing this I made him own an auto shop, while Amy’s mother is a nurse, and Jake’s mom teaches high school art (which might be canon? I can’t remember or be bothered to look it up). Also I totally forgot that Jake mentioned he was a gemini sometime and instead I used the actor’s real birthdays since they’re a day apart and I thought it was cute. Also since we know very little about Amy's childhood (that I can remember??) her family immigrated from Cuba when she was about 3 and since we don't know the second part of her surname (or if she has one? Though most Latinx people do so) I chose one for her family.
> 
> I have 5 chapters planned: this one (first meeting to the end of kindergarten), one the rest of elementary school, one for middle school, one for high school, and an epilogue, but depending on the length I may split some parts into two chapters like I did for elementary school.
> 
> Title from _Old Gemini_ by Radical Face

Jake really should have known that when Amy Santiago moved in next door she would change his life, even if he was only four at the time. 

Jake watches from his window, a whole month before he turns five, while Gina chews on her bubblegum in disinterest and turns the page of her colouring book as if she’s actually reading it, lounging on the couch like she belongs there. The sky is dark on the horizon but his eyes are glued to the street, watching for his new neighbours.

“They’re going to think you’re some sort of weird kid,” she tells him, sounding lofty and innocent all at once. “I mean, you _are_ , but image is everything.”

He ignores her and continues staring out window, watching as everything this new family owns is pushed up the lawn. “I wonder if there’s any boys our age.”

Gina glances at him, “You mean _your_ age, I am _much_ older than you are.” She’s six whole months older than him and never lets him forget it.

Jake sticks his tongue out at her and his mom scolds him from the kitchen before turning back to her coffee with Auntie Darlene. 

Gina rolls off the couch and drops her book on the coffee table, and then strolls over to the window (she never walks, she insists, she _strolls_ ). She kneels on the ground and leans her elbows against the window seat where he’s crouched. “What if there are no boys?” She turns to him gleefully, “What if there’s only _girls_ in the family.”

Jake wrinkles his nose as his breath fogs up the window. “Girls are icky.”

Gina smiles at him in a way that made him shift uncomfortably. “I’m a girl.”

“Yeah, but you’re Gina. We’ve known each other since before time.”

She thinks for a minute. “Rosa’s a girl.”

“Rosa’s scary. I’m not sure if she’s even human.”

“Mmm.”

And then a van is pulling up and four kids with dark hair are racing out of it almost before it stops, crawling and shoving each other across the yard, only slowing when a tall woman with long hair gets out of the van behind them. Behind her is a shorter man with a limp, a baby seat in one hand and toddler perched on his other hip. Gina gasps beside him, breath obstructing their view for a couple seconds. “That’s a lot of kids.”

“At least _one_ of them’s going to be my best friend,” Jake declares. Gina shifts beside him and he turns to her. “Besides you, of course.”

Gina sniffs haughtily and nods, “Of course.”

The kids outside are tearing across the lawn, arms out and shrieking and chasing each other, paying no mind to their parents who are trying to speak with the people moving their furniture. They’re moving so fast that neither Gina or Jake can tell if they’re girls or boys. The sky flickers outside and thunder groans from a distance, making both Gina and Jake jump and bang their noses against the glass. Their mothers laugh loudly from the kitchen. 

They watch in silence as the kids turn their running into some sort of complex game that seems to be a combination of invisible baseball and wrestling. 

Gina sighs beside him. “This is boring.”

As curious as Jake is about his new neighbours, he has to agree.

Gina looks around the living room and grins. “The floor’s lava!” she shrieks, before shoving him to the ground and leaping onto the wooden coffee table.

“No fair!” Jake laughs, standing up stiffly and advancing slowly towards her with his arms stuck straight out.

“Ahhhh! Lava monster!” she yelps and jumps onto the couch.

(Their mothers laugh loudly from the kitchen when he catches Gina and she dramatically sinks to the floor in her fake death, complete with an entire speech and gasping breathes and everything.)

 

* * *

 

There were so many little boys in the Santiago Álvarez family that he first thinks that his best friend will be one of them, but instead he is drawn to the only girl in the family. He tells everyone it’s because she turns five in a month too and they’re going to go to the same school (and _no,_ it’s _not_ that she has pretty eyes, he doesn’t even notice them, _honest_ ).

Jake quickly learns that there are six children living next door from where he sits in the window seat to watch them. All of them share the same bronze skin and shock of dark hair and they are both older and younger than him. 

Three days after the family moves in he runs into one of the kids, quite literally. 

They both fall down with an _oof_ and lay in the grass for a moment, groaning. Jake had been playing outside of his yard in the green space behind the row of houses. The other kid is clutching a baseball so old it’s more brown than white (so unlike the pristine white one his father has in his study upstairs).

Jake sits up, rubbing his head where the kid collided with him. “Owwwww.”

The other kid is also sitting up with a groan and Jake definitely doesn’t notice that the kid has eyes that seem to be the exact colour of his father’s coffee before he adds cream. At first he doesn’t realize that the other kid is one of his new neighbours; but after a moment he kind of recognizes the dark head of hair he’s been staring at through the window, wishing he could play with them instead of by himself again. 

“You’re one of the new neighbours!” Jake blurts out, forgetting for a moment that they just clonked heads.

The other kid kind of glares at him, a defensive look he recognizes from Rosa at daycare when people ask if they can play with her. “Yeah,” the kid answers slowly, and it’s at this point that Jake realizes that the other kid is a girl. Her hair is pulled back in a long, dark ponytail (a term he never knew existed until Gina ordered him to put one in her hair), and her eyes are both dark and warm, like melted chocolate on a s’more. The bright green bandaid slashing across her cheek has little frogs on it.

“I live in that house,” Jake explains, pointing to the familiar, faded blue of his house with the peeling siding, “we’re neighbours.”

“Oh,” she nods and it makes her ponytail swing across her shoulder to her back. “I’m Amy,” she sticks her hand out to him like a grown-up.

Jake takes it gingerly, wondering if Gina was right when she said all girls have cooties (besides her, of course). Nothing terrible happens when she shakes his hand though, so he thinks that Gina must have been lying (because she is prone to do that, often). 

“I’m Jake,” he replies after she releases his hand from her surprisingly strong grip.

She stands, tossing the old baseball back and forth between her hands and studying him where he’s still sprawled on the ground. He fidgets under the intensity of her gaze. “Do you want to play with us?” she finally asks. Her works are clear but there’s a slight breathiness to them, a lilt like she’s concentrating carefully on speaking.

Jake nods and her answering grin reveals dimples at the corners of her mouth and a spattering of freckles like wet sand across her nose. 

Someone yells her name from her yard, and she shouts back with surprising strength in her little body, leading Jake towards her house. They emerge into her yard, separated from his by a row of neat bushes. He waves at his mom, who’s sitting on the deck bent nearly in half over a sketchbook. She smiles at him from across the yard and waves back.

Jake’s immediately swarmed by three other boys. The tallest seems to be the oldest, and introduces himself as Ed. He has bright blue glasses perched on a freckled nose. His hair is cropped short but curly, like waves on an ocean. The other two boys are nearly identical, grinning almost manically at him. They both have hazel eyes like the honey his mom always puts on her toast in the morning. Their hair is dark and thick but not curly like Ed’s, falling across their foreheads and obscuring most of their eyes. 

“I’m Luís,” one of them says, at the same time the other says “I’m Andrés.” The twins both speak with the same lilting breathiness that Amy does.

Jake smiles at both of them, but then frowns when Ed punches both of them in the shoulder. He feels Amy’s presence beside him, now holding a bat that’s even more worn than the baseball is. “That’s Luís,” she points at the one who called himself Andrés and has three frog bandaids, like Amy’s, covering his arms, “and that’s Andrés,” she points at the other twin. Jake smiles in confusion, a little overwhelmed by the siblings. He’s an only child who grew up with just Gina for his entire life (and he’s still not entirely convinced that she’s actually a kid and not just a smaller version of Auntie Darlene) and attended daycare for only two months. He’s definitely not used to other children; especially loud, arguing siblings.

Amy hands him the baseball bat. It’s wooden and a little bent with no paint or labels on it. “They love to confuse strangers.”

Luís (at least, he thinks it’s Luís) grins at him, “Our first grade teacher didn’t realize that we switched names every other day.”

Andrés laughs beside him, snatching the ball out of Amy’s hands, who practically growls at him.

Ed turns to Jake. “Do you know how to play baseball?”

Jake nods proudly. “I was on the Little League team, my dad’s the coach.”

Ed smiles at him and motions to the deck of their house, walking with him to it. “Santiago Álvarez baseball is a little different. Instead of touching the base while holding the ball we tackle you.” Jake nods slowly, wondering if this is what he saw them playing the day they moved in, and if he made a mistake by agreeing to play with them. “We’ll go easy on you since it’s your first time,” Ed explains, and his accompanying grin scares Jake a little as he surveys the backyard. “If you hit it out of the backyard it’s a home-run, if you miss twice you’re out. The bases are that tree,” Ed points to the right where a large oak is growing, “the puddle,” he points to a puddle directly across from them, “and the bushes over there,” he points to the bushes separating his yard from theirs. “Any of us can get you out as long as we have the ball and tackle you before you touch the bases. You have to touch them in order but you can run all over the yard to avoid us. We can pass the ball to each other and block your path but only the person with the ball can touch you. Any part of the deck is a home-run and you have to get to it in one turn.” Ed turns to him and smiles down at him. “Got it?”

Jake nods slowly. “Hit the ball, don’t get tackled.”

Ed laughs and turns to the twins and Amy, “He’s got it.” The others whoop as Ed walks away and Andrés stands in the middle of the yard facing him. Amy is standing with her knees bent by the puddle, Luís is bouncing around the oak tree, and Ed stands lazily by the bushes.

None of them have baseball mitts, which makes Jake a little concerned, but then the baseball is flying towards him and he just barely manages to not get hit in the face.

Jake frowns at Andrés who just shrugs and makes a throwing motion at him. Jake sighs and turns to find the ball where it had rolled under the deck. He tosses it back to Andrés, who catches it and immediately winds up to throw it back.

This time Jake’s actually ready and swings at it, hitting the ball with a satisfying _thwack_. He drops the bat and bolts off towards the tree, not seeing or caring where the ball went. He’s touched the tree and heading for the puddle when a solid weight catches him in under the ribs and sends him flying straight into the puddle. The weight and him struggle in the mud to sit up. 

Amy’s toothy grin stares at him from under a spattering of mud. She pushes the ball into his arm with a loud “Gotcha” that echoes across the yard in the afternoon sun. Her brothers are laughing around them and Jake finds himself grinning despite being caught. They continue playing Santiago Álvarez baseball until their mom comes out, holding a bundle of what Amy explains is one of her little brother in her arms. Their mom tuts when she sees how filthy they are but smiles kindly at Jake. She procures a tray with cookies and glasses of milk from somewhere, setting it down on the small glass table on the deck. Ed and Luís and Andrés nearly run over each other to claim their cookies, leaving Jake holding the bat loosely and feeling out of place.

But then Amy is standing beside him, a dried slash of mud across her cheek. “You can have some cookies too,” she offers, and leads him to the deck. There are four cookies left, two for each of them; they are gooey and warm and contain way more chocolate chips than the ones his mom buys at the store. He devours one cookie and watches as her brothers run back and start an improvised version of soccer using only the baseball. Amy sits on the bench by the table and he joins her, taking a long drink of milk.

“These are _amazing_ ,” he moans.

Amy grins at him. “Mamá makes the best cookies,” she agrees.

“Mamá?”

Amy nods, and then frowns. “It’s Spanish for mom,” she explains, eying him warily.

“Mom is English for mom,” Jake grins. Amy relaxes, but then cringes when he takes far too big of a bite and manages to shove half of his second cookie into his mouth.

“You have four brothers then?” he asks around a mouthful of cookie.

Amy shakes her head. “The baby was Huberto,” she explains. “He’s only a year and we call him Herbie. But there’s also Fico, his real name’s Federico but no one calls him that, and he’s almost three.”

Jake counts out his fingers, naming her brothers under his breath. 

“You have have _five_ brothers?” he exclaims, cookie crumbs flying from his mouth as he throws his arms wide.

She swallows some milk and nods, watching the crumbs fall from his mouth with disturbed curiosity. “Yeah. Don’t you have any siblings?”

“No,” Jake answers, but then he thinks for a minute. “I have a Gina.”

Amy’s nose crinkles. “What’s a ‘Gina’?”

Jake opens his mouth to speak but then closes it to think. “She’s,” he trails off, “she’s Gina,” he supplies helpfully. At her blank look he continues. “She’s like a sister, I guess. Our mom’s were best friends since forever so we’ve known each other since before we were born.”

Amy frowns at him. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“What?”

“You can’t know someone before you were born.”

“What?” Jake repeats, frowning at her. “Why not?”

Amy’s face twists in confusion, “Because you can’t?”

“Yeah, but _why?_ ”

“I don’t know.” Her nose crinkles and the corners of her lips twist down. “You just can’t.”

He sticks his tongue out at her because his mom isn’t here to tell him not to, and Amy sticks her tongue out back at him.

She finishes her first cookie and drinks her milk slowly. “Do you have a nickname?”

Jake shrugs. “Mom says my real name is Jacob, but no one except my great-aunt Abigail calls me that, and she’s super scary.”

Amy nods. “Everyone in my family has a nickname, except for Luís and Andrés. Ed’s full name is Edmundo, but Luís couldn’t pronounce it when he was a baby so everyone calls him Ed now.”

“What about you?”

“My name’s Amada.”

“Like Amanda?”

“Like who?”

Jake swallows hismilk. “Like Amanda B.? She goes to daycare but she’s really boring. All she does is complain about there not being enough sparkles at craft time.”

“I’ve never heard of any Amanda's,” Amy tells him, head tilted to the side and bare feet swinging back and forth.

“Really?” he gasps. “There’s like three Amanda’s in my Daycare. Amanda B., Amanda G., and Amanda S.”

Amy shrugs. “Amanda isn’t a common name where I’m from.”

Jake nods in understanding. “I’ve never moved from our house. I stay at my nana’s sometimes though.” His brows draw together in concentration. “I don’t think there’s any Amanda’s there though.”

Amy finishes her second cookie, brushing her hands together away from her to get the crumbs off her fingers without getting them on her shirt, which Jake thinks is funny because her shirt is already muddy. When he tells her this she sticks her tongue out at him. 

“My abi still lives in Cuba.”

“You’re from Cuba?” Jake asks. Amy nods. “My dad flies there sometimes. He’s a pilot,” he declares proudly.

Amy smiles at him. “I don’t really remember much of it, except that it was hot and the buildings were colourful. Mi abi and abo still live there. But mi abuelo moved here with us. He’s a cop.”

Jake’s eyes brighten, “I wanna be a cop when I grow up.” 

Amy grins at him, “So do I.”

Jake’s smile fades, “But we have to go to school before we grow up, and I don’t want to go to school.”

“Why not?” Amy asks, turning her body to him, “I’m excited for school.”

Jake shrugs and scuffs the deck with the tip of his shoe. “I don’t know anyone there, except Gina and Rosa, but Gina’s in a different class and Rosa’s in grade one.”

Amy frowns at his response, but then shrugs. “I’m going to the school close to here.”

Jake glances up at her. “The one with the twirly slide?” She nods and he brightens. “Me too! I’m starting kindergarten there.”

Amy’s eyes crinkle in a smile. “So am I. My teacher is Ms. Crystal.”

Jake gasps. “Me too!”

She bumps his shoulder with hers, “See, now you’ll know me.”

(t night before his bedtime story he tells his mom that his new best friend in the whole wide world is Amy and his mom smiles before reading him the next chapter of her worn copy of  _Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe._ He really wanted to have a guy friend because he already has two girl friends, but Amy is different because she doesn’t read her colouring books like Gina and, unlike Rosa, she smiles when she punches him on the arm.)

 

* * *

 

The first time he makes fun of Amy for mixing up the words in a sentence she doesn’t talk to him for two whole days. And it was the longest two days of his entire life. He doesn’t even really remember what she said, just that it kind of made sense but didn’t really at the same time. She doesn’t burst into tears, but her face looks like the Hulk (minus all the green rage) and she turns on her heel and storms into the house. Ed and Luís and Andrés are on the other side of the yard and don’t notice what happened until Ed looks up and sees Amy missing. He leaps up and runs inside after her, leaving the twins glaring at him in uncertain defence of their sister. Jake walks home with his head low and the back of his neck burning.

The next day he goes to play with Ed and Luís and Andrés but it’s not the same without Amy. They act like nothing happened but Jake finds himself feeling out of place and off balance, like when he spins too fast on a tire swing and tries to walk in a straight line. On the second day, Amy plays with them again but she doesn’t speak to him or even look at him. That night, his mom helps him make an apology card and he writes in red marker because it’s her favourite colour even if he likes blue better.

Jake gives it to her the next morning, watching carefully as she deciphers the shaky scrawl where his mom guided his hand. Amy hugs him in forgiveness and Jake forgets that hugs are gross unless they’re from your mom. She explains that when she went to daycare at their old house the other kids always laughed at her when she mixed up her words or spoke Spanish.

Jake asks her to teach him Spanish so he can help her if she every gets confused again.

(He also suggests that she punch the next person who makes fun of her accent, she agrees but her mamá overhears and immediately rejects the idea. But it’s okay because later that night, after they’d eaten supper at their own houses and fireflies are hanging low in the warm night, Amy and him plot the perfect plan for the hypothetical event where she needs to punch someone.)

 

* * *

 

It’s six days before he turns five, and he’s played with the Santiago Álvarez siblings almost every single day since they moved in next door. Their mothers spend their time talking and drinking lemonade that the kids are not allowed to have while Herbie plays on a colourful blanket on the deck between them. Fico is only allowed to play with them under his mamá’s watchful eye; Amy explains that every time he’s outside he always tries to run onto the road so they have to be careful. Fico follows Amy around like the lost puppy that followed him and Gina and Auntie Darlene home from the park one day.

While they’re playing home free Jake tells her that he turns five in a week.

They’re squished in the small well outside the basement window, trying to hide from Ed, who’s it. She frowns at him, “No, you can’t, _I’m_ turning five in a week,” her voice is a soft hiss of wind against his face.

He frowns back at her, neglecting his lookout duty in favour of correcting her. “But my mom said that I turn five in a week.”

“Well we can’t both turn five in a week.”

“Why not?”

“Because we can’t have the same birthday, butthead,” she adds the last part in a whisper of a whisper, because mom’s can hear everything and she isn’t allowed to call people ‘butthead’, even if they are buttheads.

“But _why_?” Jake whines, sure that Amy will know the answer because she knows everything.

“Just because.” Amy shrugs and adds more grass to her handful of it, “Mamá said I’ll be five on the 19th of August, which is in exactly seven days. And seven days is a week.”

Jake finally looks back down the side of the house and, satisfied that Ed is still searching by the oak tree that the twins have climbed, turns back to Amy. “Well my birthday is on the 18th.”

“Ha!” she whisper-shouts at him, “You turn five in six days, which isn’t a week.”

Jake’s face splits open in a grin that shows off the tooth he lost three days ago when she tackled him in a wrestling match for the last cookie. “That means I’m older than you and can boss you around.”

Amy’s dark brows draw together, “Wait, that’s not—”

But she never finishes her sentence because Ed is towering above them and they’re throwing handfuls of grass at him in distraction, yelling “Scatter!” and running in different directions 

(Amy sacrifices herself for him by diving in front of him when Ed has him cornered. The next round Amy forgets about her brothers and spends the entire time chasing him around until she tags him as payment for her self-sacrifice.)

 

* * *

 

Their parents decide to throw them a joint birthday party (the first of many to come) on the 20th. Jake’s nana comes, and so does Gina and Auntie Darlene and Rosa and her parents and her baby sisters. All of Amy’s brothers are there even though Herbie screams through most of _Happy Birthday_ and Fico blows out the candles on Amy’s cake. Her abuelo takes a day off work and her papá closes up his auto shop early to come to the party.

He’s eating his own cake on a bench (because she likes vanilla which is only good if there’s sprinkles in it, like his confetti cake, which is the best cake, obviously; to avoid a fight their parents decided two different cakes would be for the best), watching Gina entertain the adults with her dancing and Rosa play Santiago Álvarez baseball with an excitement he’s never seen in her before, smiling widely when she gets to tackle somebody.

The lights from the setting sun is momentarily blocked out as Amy stands above him. “Where’s your papá?” she asks by way of greeting.

“Flying somewhere over Canada,” Jake answers. His smile is forced, missing the usually proud note to it when he speaks of his dad. He doesn’t meet her eyes.

She sits beside him and offers her the rest of her vanilla cake, even though he still has some of his confetti cake left and vanilla is her favourite. “You can borrow my papá for tonight,” she offers. 

“I could?” Amy nods and offers him her cake again. When he starts to refuse she tells him that she’s full, which he knows is a lie because Fico shoved her half eaten hamburger out of her hands and on to the ground and she didn’t ask for another one because she didn’t want to tell on him and get him in trouble. He takes the cake with a small smile. 

“Thanks,” he says, and then takes a bite of cake that is way too big for his mouth. Amy’s nose crinkles when he chews with his mouth open but she doesn’t complain about his chewing habits like she usually does. They watch as Rosa takes down Ed with ease, which impresses them both because Ed almost never gets tackled out. 

Jake finishes both of their cakes, but leaves the icing for Amy because he knows she loves icing. She eats it and then stands, taking both their paper plates and depositing them in the garbage even though all the other plates are left out. 

She returns and grabs his hand, pulling him into a game of Santiago Álvarez baseball where he succeeds in getting no home-runs because Amy tackles him at second base every time.

(But it’s okay, because he forgets about his dad missing his birthday and Amy smiles every time he tackles her out and her papá throws him up in the air five times like he did for Amy and also gives him a hug before showing him and Amy the best places to hide from Ed when they play home free later. And Gina gives him the comic book he’s been wanting for forever and Rosa gives him an awesome water gun and Jake laughs the entire night.)

 

* * *

 

Jake is so nervous for the first day of kindergarten that he almost refuses to go. He’s still in his dinosaur pyjamas when the doorbell rings. He grumbles when his mom sends him to open it, revealing Amy standing there with her mom beside her. She’s wearing a white t-shirt with navy stars under a pair of blue-jean overalls, too big for her and cropped off at the knees; he’s pretty sure they were Ed’s last month. Her hair is pulled into a high ponytail and shines in the morning sun. Her legs are bare and there’s only one frog bandaid across her left knee. Her shoes are neatly tied (she learned how to tie her shoes a day before he did and laughed at him when he struggled, before eventually teaching him how to tie a knot too), and her red backpack straps are on both shoulders, filled to almost overflowing.

Jake grunts at them in greeting and slumps back into his house, leaving the door wide open. He retreats to his room and sits on the bed, staring at the castle nightlight that’s plugged in beside his closet. Amy walks into his room five minutes later, no longer wearing her backpack or her shoes (because Amada Santiago Álvarez does not wear dirty shoes on white carpet). 

She stares at him for a long moment before asking loudly, “Is that Cera?”

Jake looks down at his pj shirt, the triceratops from _The Land Before Time_ grinning back up at him. “It’s Gina’s,” he says hotly, partially defensive and completely lying.

Amy crosses his room and flops down on his bed. “Cera’s my favourite.”

Jake stares at her, before mumbling, “She’s my favourite too.”

They sit in silence before Amy speaks up, eyes on the ceiling where most of his glow-in-the-dark stars are starting to peel off. “Why are you still in your pjs?”

“Because I’m not going to school.”

She sits up so fast her ponytail whips her in the face. “ _What_?” she shouts. “But you promised.”

Jake fidgets beside her and shrugs, aiming for the casual coolness his father makes look so easy. “I don’t want to go.”

Amy jumps up and stares at him. “But you _pinky_ promised! You can’t break a pinky promise!” Jake looks anywhere but her and doesn’t answer. “You can’t make me go all by myself! I only know Gina, and she said I can’t talk to her at recess or lunch!”

Jake still doesn’t look at her.

“Fine! Break your promise, butthead!” Amy spins on her heel and marches out the door, slamming it behind her and making Jake feel worse than he did when he teased her about messing up her words.

(He ends up wearing black shorts and a blue plaid button up that his nana bought for him that Gina calls ‘tacky’, but Amy beams at him when he walks down the stairs and his face burns bright red and their moms take ten thousand pictures too many but Amy holds his hand with pink ears so he just smiles through it all.)

 

* * *

 

Amy gets glasses a month into kindergarten. Jake tries really hard not to laugh when he first sees them (he really does, _honest_ ). She fidgets on his front porch in the early morning sun, Ed and the twins are standing at the end of the sidewalk, waiting for them so they can all walk to school together.

Jake sputters out a laugh, biting his tongue to try and stifle it.

The glasses large and round and black, making her look owlish. And she’s glaring at him through the lenses, the anger and embarrassment in her dark eyes magnified by the lenses. “Shut up, butthead,” she mutters.

“I didn’t say anything,” Jake holds his hands out in front of him and fights the laugh that’s threatening him. Amy huffs loudly, ears bright pink, and turns to leave. “Wait!” She pauses but doesn’t turn back. He shouts a goodbye to his mom and shuts the door, moving to stand beside her on the porch and holding his hand out. She sighs and takes her glasses off, passing them to him. He tries them on and sticks his arms out in disorientation. “Wow, you’re blind!”

She smacks at his arm and pulls her glasses off his face, settling them back on her nose. The frame obscures the spattering of freckles there. “I know I am,” she snaps, “That’s why I have glasses.”

“They’re pretty,” he blurts out and his face is suddenly flaming.

The tips of her ears flush brighter red and she mumbles a _thanks_ before running to catch up to her brothers as he trails after her. Ed has his hands on each side of his own glasses, jiggling them up and down with his fingers stuck out, a gigantic grin on his face as he dances around a giggling Amy.

She keeps looking over the tops of her glasses instead of through them during class, which he’s pretty sure defeats the whole purpose of wearing glasses, but she doesn’t elbow him to read their worksheets anymore and doesn’t shift and squint at the board when their teacher asks her to read something out loud, so he supposes the glasses are helping.

(Her mamá asks them how school is that evening. Amy responds that her friends aren’t wiggly anymore and Jake says that she beat him while racing to the park because she can see now. Her mamá lets out a strangled laugh and serves them both more rice.)

 

* * *

 

Jake sort of celebrates Christmas and sort of doesn’t. His mom is Jewish but his dad isn’t, which means they kind celebrate Jewish holidays and kind of celebrate other holidays. His nana is insistent about a no tree policy though, which makes his mom fondly roll her eyes and his dad sneak a tiny paper tree onto Jake’s bedside table. Jake doesn’t really get the point of a tree, but happily helps Amy and her brothers decorate their tree because their mamá feeds them freshly baked cookies.

On Christmas eve he’s waiting for Gina and Auntie Darlene to arrive with Chinese food and movies. Gina never really knew her dad or her grandparents, and didn’t have any family living nearby, so her and Auntie Darlene always spent Christmas Eve and Day with Jake and his mom and dad and nana. Even though the Linetti’s celebrate Christmas, they spent the day doing the Peralta’s traditions instead. 

Jake hasn’t played with Amy and her brothers since school was out because they have been so busy helping their mamá and papá prepare for Christmas. He’s only seen them in passing, briefly while they were walking down the sidewalk at the same time. It makes him feel a little lonely; he’s grown so used to playing with the Santiago Álvarez siblings everyday that it’s been weird to barely see them. But Gina comes over almost everyday and even Rosa visits once (their parents shooed them outside and Rosa immediately hit him square in the face with a snowball that resulted in an hour long war; he lost, _terribly_ ).

It seems like every time he’s looked out the window today there’s new people coming or going from his neighbours’ house. Jake has never seen the Santiago Álvarez’s house so busy, which, considering they have six kids, is impressive. There’s double the kids than usual (Jake secretly wonders if they could make a class filled with just the kids related to the Santiago Álvarez’s, he’s pretty sure they could). Adults are shuffling up and down the walk, carrying dishes and gifts and sometimes even more kids. It’s just barely snowing outside, but Ed and the twins and Amy and her cousins are huddled outside, wearing thick coats and hats and mitts and staring up at the sky in wonder. Ed sticks his tongue out and catches a snowflake in his mouth, jumping up with delight while his brothers and sister and cousins scatter to catch their own snowflakes. 

Amy notices Jake sitting in the window and smiles blindingly up at him, giving him a wave that shakes her whole body. Her hat is dusted with snow and her cheeks are bright pink under her glasses. Jake grins and waves back at her, laughing when a snowflake swirls under her glasses and into her eye, causing her to flinch and blink furiously. She notices him laughing and tries to do her best imitation of her mamá’s _you-are-in-so-much-trouble_ stance, but a bright grin is tugging at her lips and rendering her mock-anger moot. Jake sticks his thumbs to the sides of his head and wiggles his fingers at her, causing Amy to burst into giggles. She’s still laughing when something hits her in the back of her head, showering her in snow. Her body jolts to a stop, stiffly turning to Luís, who’s standing in the middle of the yard, arm still-half raised and smirk slipping off his face as he takes in his sister’s face. He looks like he’s regretting every decision that has brought him to this moment, and Jake can’t blame him. Amy’s absolutely terrifying when she’s angry, sometimes even more so than Rosa is in general.

Luís quickly starts to back away from Amy, hands raised in surrender. Ed and Andrés and a couple other kids are giving Amy a wide berth, watching what’s about to come with a mixture of fear and amusement. (Andrés is grinning so wide Jake’s pretty sure his face will split in half; the twins would defend each other against just about anything, but they would also give just about anything to witness the other in a confrontation with another sibling that they’re definitely going to lose.)

Luís finally turns to flee, which is a mistake. As soon as his back is turned, Amy bends down to make a snowball and then straightens and throws it at Luís all in one fluid motion. The snowball hits Luís solidly in the back, making him stagger and then turn to see Amy barely containing her laughter. Jake winces for him. He knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of one of Amy’s snowballs. The confrontation turns into a full-fledged snowball war, and Jake finds himself fogging up the window from his nose pressed up against the glass, laughing as he watches Ed and Amy crouch by a tree, him making snowballs as fast as he can to pass to her while she picks off brothers and cousins alike.

The doorbell rings and Jake races to answer it. Gina strolls in with a flourish of snowflakes and (somehow) glitter, carrying a white bag with a couple styrofoam containers inside. Auntie Darlene walks in behind her, gracefully kicking off wet boots and balancing a tower of twice as many styrofoam containers as Gina. 

(He falls asleep with his belly warm from hot chocolate and a whipped cream moustache across his upper lip. Gina and him are huddled under a blanket nana had knit, nana herself settled beside them with an arm wrapped around each of them.)

 

* * *

 

They make bets. Usually just simple ones like who can run to the tree the fastest or who can hit the most home-runs in Santiago Álvarez baseball or who can cross the monkey bars backwards quicker or who can eat more cookies in five minutes (Amy’s mamá puts a stop to that one and declares food related bets off limits when Jake starts choking).

They bet on who can sing the alphabet the fastest and Amy wins even though she sings it in Spanish and Spanish has a whole extra letter in it. She teaches him the alphabet in Spanish and he helps her with the alphabet in English and by the end of the day Jake can mostly remember the Spanish letters and she can flawlessly sing the English version. She doesn’t even mess up the _e_ and the _i_ or pause at the spot where the _ñ_ goes anymore. 

(His mom is working late and his dad is flying somewhere over Canada, so he stays at the Santiago Álvarez’s place for the evening. When her papá gets home that night they sing him both versions and he sneaks them each a cookie before supper.)

 

* * *

 

It’s around easter when his turtle, Graham Crackers, gets married and moves in with his wife. Jake cries for a week and his mom tries to make him feel better with homemade cupcakes.

Amy comes over to visit him and they have a sleepover where his mom lets them stay up late and watch _The Little Mermaid_ and Jake almost forgets about how much he misses Graham Crackers when Amy laughs so hard that root beer comes out her nose.

Later that night, when Jake and Amy are lying in their sleeping bags on the living room floor and are supposed to be asleep, Jake turns his head to look at Amy.

“Ames?”

Amy hums sleepily but opens her eyes to look at him; they sparkle in the moonlight streaming in from the open curtain.

“I don’t want to get married and forget about my friends like Graham Crackers did.”

Amy props herself up on her elbow. “Me neither.”

Jake rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. “We could get married one day.”

“Yeah?” Amy asks, a little more alert.

Jake turns his head to look at her. “Yeah, then if we get married and already have all the same friends we won’t forget about them.”

Amy nods slowly and grins, then sticks out her hand. “Deal,” she agrees with a grin.

(Karen Peralta overhears this promise between Jake and Amy, while coming downstairs to check on the two kids, and she can’t help but feel like crying because, while her and Roger have their problems, she never wanted them to affect their beautiful son.)

(Soon she doesn’t worry about whether her dysfunctional marriage will affect Jake’s ability to love and be loved, because even all the way back in elementary school she knew that no matter what happened, her son would always have Amy around him.)

 

* * *

 

They graduate from kindergarten in a ceremony that Jake finds kind of lame but that Amy loves. And he can’t blame her; even though she has five siblings her parents still treat each one of them as an individual worthy of their full attention, and so when she walks across the tiny stage set up in the gym the other seven Santiago Álvarez burst into loud cheers, even baby Herbie tries to clap his hands but mostly just swats his papá’s face by accident.

Gina crosses the stage in a jewelled cap that took her (read: Jake) three hours to make (though her mom did make them brownies so it was worth it).

If Jake is being honest with himself, the reason he finds the ceremony kind of lame is that his dad isn’t there. He had promised, but was called into work, and while Jake is disappointed that his dad didn’t show up, he’s more disappointed in himself that he actually kind of expected his dad to be there. All he can think as the kid before him crosses the stage is how lonely his mom looks beside the Santiago Álvarez clan and Auntie Darlene and Gina’s aunts and uncles. 

But when they call his name and he crosses the stage, the Santiago Álvarez family cheers as loudly as they did for Amy and his mom looks more proud than he’s ever seen her and Auntie Darlene blows kisses to him and maybe it’s okay that his dad couldn’t make it, because at least the rest of his family could.

Afterwards Gina and Amy hug him before their families catch up to them. 

“I’m sorry your dad couldn’t make it,” Amy says.

Jake shrugs and grins at them, only partially faking his happiness, “It’s okay.”

Gina throws an arm around his shoulder and pinches his cheek, “You don’t need him,” she declares loudly, a little bitter about father’s herself considering hers left in the middle of the night two years before and she can barely remember him.

And then his mom and Auntie Darlene and Gina’s only marginally crazy aunts and uncles and the Santiago Álvarez siblings and Amy’s mamá and papá are there and they’re all cheering and congratulating the three former-kindergartener’s and Jake’s more or less fine.

His mom hugs him a little tighter than usual and promises him a huge ice cream sundae.

(And then it really is okay, because he knows that this family is here to stay.)

 


	2. times are changing (but so are we)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grade 1 — Grade 3
> 
> I split the elementary school part (again) because it was getting too long for one chapter (again lmao). There's only one part left of the next chapter and then editing so it should be up early next week (because I have a research paper that I haven't even started on due Monday whoops).
> 
> Also last night's B99 ep??? Made me tear up??? It was so perfect how???

Amy and her family go back to Cuba to visit her grandparents a couple weeks before school starts, so she’s away for their birthdays. Jake’s mom invites Rosa and her sisters and Gina and Charles and their little sister but Jake can’t help feeling a little lonely, like he was missing something. He knows it’s probably because he’s so used to the Santiago Álvarez siblings being around that it just seems like there’s something missing when they aren’t there. (He secretly admits that it’s Amy that he’s missing, but that’s only in the quiet darkness of the night when he wakes up to hear his parents whisper yelling down the hall and he can’t get back to sleep.)

The six birthday candles on the cake look lonely without a second cake beside it, and so Jake wishes for Amy to never again miss their joint birthday and hopes it will come true. He gets awesome presents from his friends and they take turns playing _Kirby’s Dream Land_ on his new Gameboy and it’s pretty awesome (even if Charles is somehow the best out of all of them; Jake thinks he’s found a new friend to teach him all of his video game skills).

Amy had given him his present before they left, a stuffed triceratops that’s reminiscent of Cera from _The Land Before Time_ and he loves it more than any of his other gifts (though if anyone asks it’s definitely his new Gameboy that’s his favourite.)

(Jake’s wish does come true, all the way until they’re ninety and living in a nursing home together, they never again celebrate a birthday apart form each other.)

 

* * *

 

On the first day of grade one their teacher calls her by the wrong name. Jake itches to correct him, but Amy just says “here” like the teacher didn’t even do anything wrong, so Jake bites his tongue and keeps a watchful eye on Amy as she straightens the already straight papers in her binder.

“I thought your name was Amada Santiago Álvarez?” he asks her at recess. He’s leaning against the jungle-gym while she sits two bars above him, legs dangling through the bars and feet swinging back and forth.

“It is.”

“Why’d the teacher just call you Amy Santiago then?” Jake’s angry for her, because she isn’t. In fact, her face is weirdly blank. “He didn’t even try to say Amada! And he missed a whole part of your last name!”

“Mamá and papá thought it would be easier if we shortened it so people wouldn’t get confused,” Amy responds quietly. Jake can’t see her face a for a very brief moment he doesn’t want to, suddenly afraid that his best friend, who is so brave that she didn’t even cry when they accidentally crashed their bikes into each other last week and she scraped her knee up so badly her mamá had to take her to the hospital, will look as small as she sounds. 

“But it’s a whole part of your name!” Jake protests.

Amy shrugs and kicks her feet harder, gripping a bar for support. “Yeah, but it’s easier for people to just say Amy Santiago. Plus sometimes kids laugh when they hear that my name’s Amada because they don’t think it’s a real name.”

Jake crosses his arms across his chest and pouts. “That’s not fair.”

Amy shrugs again and Jake desperately wants her to smile again so he tells her the one thing only Gina and his mom know. “My nana calls me Pineapples.”

Amy’s head shoots up, a wide smile spreading across her face as she looks down at him. “Your nana calls you _Pineapples_?”

“Yeah but you can’t tell _any_ one,” he pleads, “ _especially_ your brothers.”

She nods solemnly and presses one hand to her heart and holds up the other as if taking an oath, which is completely at odds with the toothy grin that’s plastered against her face, “I promise.”

“Pinky swear?”

Her finger wraps around his, dark eyes sparkling for the first time that day.

“Pinky swear.”

(Her brothers also shorten their last name to just Santiago, and all of them are downcast on the walk home. Ed tries to joke around and make his younger siblings smile, but even his attempts are half-hearted, so Jake lets them all tackle him in Santiago Álvarez baseball that night, because he thinks it makes them happy. They all pinky swear to not change the name of their improvised baseball game, even if the school forgets the last part of their name. )

 

* * *

 

It’s after Thanksgiving, during that weird stretch approaching Christmas break, where everything’s a little magical because of the holidays coming up and all the kids are still in school but their excitement hangs as heavy in the air as the snow does, when he sees it.

Amy is waiting for him at the front door while he goes searching in the garage for a scarf and hat to make a snowman with. When Jake opens the door to the garage he can hear weird noises coming from somewhere in the messy garage, but the weirdest thing is that the light to the car is on. Jake steps into the garage and around a pile of boxes when he sees the car and, more specifically, his mom’s best friend Miss Shelia and his dad attacking each other. It takes Jake a second to realize what’s happening, but when he sees his dad’s weird butt and Miss Shelia’s leotard around her ankles Jake’s entire body stills, as if each molecule of his being had frozen solid.

He can hear Amy calling him from inside the house, but Jake remains frozen to the spot, horrified and unable to take his eyes off the adults in the car and more than a little bit nauseous.

“Jake? Are you coming?” Amy asks from the door, and when he doesn’t respond she walks into the garage and touches his shoulder. Jake jumps in shock, before grabbing Amy’s hand and dragging her out of the garage, quickly closing the door behind him, but not before Amy catches a glimpse of what was happening.

Amy’s nearly as shocked as he is; she points at the garage, “Th-That was— But it wasn’t— And I mean—” she stutters.

Jake shudders, unable to get the image out of his mind and pulls her up to his room, slamming the door behind them.

Amy looks to Jake in bewilderment. “What was— But they were—”

Jake throws himself onto his bed and screams into his pillow. 

“I will never unseen that,” Jake mutters, finally sitting up and looking at Amy. “Especially my dad’s butt. And that— That blue leotard!”

“Aquamarine,” Amy corrects, her face blank.

Jake stares at her in slight disgust. “Does it matter?”

Amy shakes her head and frowns a little. Her winter jacket crinkles loudly in his room as she sits down on the edge of his bed and looks down at Jake. “No, sorry. I don’t know.”

Jake sighs and sits up beside Amy. “It’s fine.” He rubs his thumb over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle bandaid around his pinky finger covering the paper cut he got while helping Gina make a card for Auntie Darlene’s birthday. “I don’t know what to do,” Jake finally admits.

Amy’s quiet for a second, chewing on her lower lip. “Are you going to tell your mom?”

Jake shakes his head. “Yes. No. I don’t know. It’d break her heart and I don’t want to do that. But I think she should know, you know?”

Amy hums in agreement and pulls her legs up to her body, resting her chin on her knees.

Just then the door opens, and Jake’s dad appears in the doorway. He grins at them, “Hey kids, you two doing alright?”

They both nod, staring at him with wide eyes. “Awesome,” his dad says, and he is too preoccupied with flattening his hair out to realize that Jake and Amy are staring at him in a mixture of horrified disgust and outrage. The door shuts behind him and Jake doubles over, clutching his stomach as his nausea comes back. Amy rubs a hand over his back like her mamá does when she doesn’t feel well.

Jake groans and buries his face in his hands, before looking up at Amy, a sharp glint of determination in his eyes. “I’m not going to tell my mom, but I’m never going to forgive my dad either.”

Amy nods. “Me neither.”

Jake grins at her and gives her a quick hug. “Wanna play Snakes and Ladders up here instead of going back down there?” he asks.

Amy smiles back at him, “Definitely.”

(Little does Jake know, but his mom already knows about Miss Shelia Bodden, and Wendy the flight attendant, and Bonnie who wears a wig, and the all of the other women. She also quickly finds out what her son saw, and her heart swells with love for him when she gets drawing after drawing from him telling her how much he loves her; after all, he has always her little man, her little protector.)

 

* * *

 

Auntie Darlene remarries a man named Lynn (which Jake thinks is a funny name; Gina less so) in the spring of grade one. Lynn has two children, a three year-old daughter and a seven year-old son. Gina doesn’t say much about Cleo (Jake’s pretty sure it’s because Gina secretly thinks she’s cute and has always wanted a baby sister), but she is almost constantly complaining about the son.

“He’s just _soooooo_ _weird_.” It’s recess and Amy’s home sick and Rosa’s in a lunchtime time-out, so it’s just him and his best friend who he’s known since before they were born (even if Amy _claims_ that’s not possible).

Jake shrugs and offers her a cookie. “He can’t be all bad.”

“He eats chicken feet. _Chicken feet_. It’s disgusting.” Gina’s nose crinkles as her face pulls into a sneer. “And they love soup, Jake. _Soup_. I can’t have that in my family.”

“What’s his name?”

Gina’s nose twists as she frowns. “Charles Boyle.”

Jake hums and chews on a cookie, before choking on it. “Wait, Charles _Boyle_ , as in Charles Boyle who has a ginormous crush on Rosa, Charles Boyle? As in Charles Boyle who you _kissed_ last year, Charles Boyle?” 

Gina scowls at him and snatches the half-eaten cookie out of his hand, eating the rest of it and avoiding his eyes. 

Jake’s eyebrows climb high on his forehead. “Charles Boyle will be your step-brother. Charles Boyle, who you _kissed?_ On the _lips?_ You _kissed_ your _brother_ on the _lips?_ ”

_“_ He’s not my brother yet,” Gina snarls while her scowl doubles in effort and she glares at him with all the anger and embarrassment that a pint-sized Linetti can muster. 

Jake tries not to laugh at her, and offers her his last cookie in slight apology. “You’ll be like Luke and Leia.”

Gina turns her nose up in the air. “I don’t know who they are, but they sound terrible.”

Jake’s mouth drops. “You haven’t see _Star Wars_?”

“No, I’m too pretty for that.”

(Jake goes over to Amy’s house that night to tell her everything he’s learned. When he finishes explaining, Amy asks “Like Leia and Luke?” with a dry cough and Jake’s stomach swoops with something unnamed, like the thrill you get when you pause at the top of a roller coaster right before the fall. He claims it’s her germs attacking him.)

(Years later, he thinks back to that night and laughs at himself, because that swooping sensation he felt that night, with Amy in her hand-me-down Mickey Mouse pjs, nose running and surrounded by tissues, was the same sensation he felt the very first time he kissed her, and every time after  that.)

 

* * *

 

They celebrate their seventh birthday together again, with the two cakes and a screaming Herbie and a game of Santiago Álvarez baseball and all their friends, exactly like when they turned five (even his father is not there again, but Jake tries to ignore that similarity).

“I’m glad we get to have our birthdays together again,” Amy says, handing him a slice of cake and sitting down beside him on the swinging bench her parents had recently added to their porch. 

“Yeah?” Jake asks, immediately shoving a too big bite of cake into his mouth.

Amy barely responds to the half chewed food that may or may not be spilling out of his mouth, just hands him a napkin without looking. “Yeah.” She takes a delicate bite of her cake and swallows before continuing. “My wish came true last year.”

Jake swallows too. “Yeah?”

Amy nods and her face is only a little pink. “Yeah, I wished we wouldn’t have to spend another birthday apart.”

Jake’s face splits into a blinding grin and he ignores the fluttering feeling in his stomach. “That’s what I wished for too!” he exclaims.

Amy grins, and that small dimple creases her cheek. “Really?”

Jake nods excitedly, momentarily forgetting his cake. “Really really!”

Amy laughs and leans back against the bench, causing their seat to rock gently back and forth. “I can’t believe we had the same wish.”

Jake grins at her. “I’m glad it came true.”

Amy’s eyes are bright when they land on his, “Me too.”

(They don’t notice their mothers standing with each other in the porch doorway, glancing at each other with knowing smiles.)

 

* * *

 

Gina is actually in their second grade class, which makes school… interesting, to say the least. There are at least four separate glitter related incidents in the first week of school, and while Amy is concerned that they’ll get caught, she does keep a lookout while Gina and Jake plot their next… incident.

While Gina is just about the polar opposite of Amy, she’s still as protective of Amy as she is of Jake. And that protectiveness comes out full force when a fifth grader named Keith Pembroke starts teasing Amy on the playground. They name him the Vulture; Charles comes up the the name around a peanut butter and fake crab sandwich, and even as Gina watches him in disgust she has to agree it’s a good name. Rosa tells them about the Vulture from when she’s seen him in detention, and they hatch a plan to get rid of him. Of course, like all good plans, it goes terribly wrong and results in the Vulture cornering Amy and Gina near the farthest corner of the fence, far away from where the teachers might wander during supervision.

Jake just reaches them to find the Vulture sneering at a teary-eyed Amy. Jake’s about to speak up or shove the Vulture and also probably also die because no one makes Amy cry when Gina steps in front of Amy with her hands on her hips. “Back off, birdbrain,” she growls.

The Vulture raises a hand to his chest in mock-hurt. “Wow, whatever will I do,” he pouts, and then his face changes and if Jake didn’t know any better he would think the fifth grader was actually a vulture.

And that’s when Gina performs such a perfect high kick that even her mean dance teacher couldn’t criticize her. The kick catches the Vulture on his shoulder and he stumbles a little, and then advances towards Gina with a dangerous glint in his eyes.

He pushes Gina to the ground, and Jake is just about to march straight up to the Vulture and punch him in the face because that’s one of his very best friends and no long is allowed to lay a hand on her ever, when Amy beats him to it. She drops the book she’s holding and marches straight up to the much larger kid and, in a move he saw her do to Andrés once when he purposefully spilt a glass of milk on her book, knees the Vulture right in the groin. He drops like a brick, howling and clutching at his groin. Amy stands above him, terrifying in her seven year-old anger. From the corner of his eye Jake sees Rosa run up from the soccer field, but she pauses when she takes stock of the situation: Gina rubbing at her stinging arm from where it hit the ground, Jake standing a couple feet away, and Amy towering over trembling the Vulture, even though she’s only about half his size. And then Rosa grins widely at Amy and walks over to help Gina to her feet.

“You don’t touch her again, you hear me,” Amy snarls at The Vulture, and he whimpers and nods. “And leave my friends and I alone.”

Later that day, Amy says she can barely remember the encounter, just that she was so mad at the Vulture for shoving Gina that she lost it.

Gina grins and threads an arm through Amy’s, pulling her along the sidewalk and away from Jake as they walk back to their houses with Amy’s brothers. “For saving my life,” Gina says dramatically, “I am going to reward you with a makeover.”

“Uh, thanks? I think?” Amy responds, giving Jake a terrified look.

(Gina locks Jake out of his room for nearly an hour, and when her and Amy emerge, Gina triumphant and Amy uncomfortable, Jake has to do a double take. He’s been on the receiving end of Gina’s makeup trials, and unfortunately Amy seems to be even more uncomfortable than he usually is, but that could also be the fact that she is wearing his mom’s high heels and a dress that is way to big for her. Jake can’t help the snort that escapes him, and Amy takes off a shoe to throw at his head. She has amazingly precise aim considering her glasses are currently in Gina’s hands.

“You look _preeeetttyyy_ ,” Jake tells her as Gina goes to get her mascara brush again. 

“I can’t see,” Amy responds blankly, but she grins when Gina comes back into the room, wielding a tube of lipstick and a mascara brush.

“You’re next, pretty boy,” Gina says with a cackle.)

 

* * *

 

Thanksgiving comes and suddenly Jake’s fatherless. He’s not really sure what happened, just that he went to bed with a father the night before Thanksgiving and woke up without one.

(He wonders if it would be easier if his dad had died in a plane crash or something, at least that would stop this feeling of empty insignificance that he wasn’t enough to make his dad stick around.)

He remembers waking up last night to the sounds of whispered yelling, but it was nothing new so he had rolled over and drifted back to sleep, clutching the dinosaur Amy got him for their sixth birthdays to his chest.

That morning his mom’s eyes are red-rimmed and her makeup is smeared and she looks like she hasn’t slept all night when Jake stumbles downstairs for some cereal and Saturday morning cartoons. He’s still half asleep so while he notices that something is off about the house, he can’t quite figure out what it is.

“Mom?” Jake asks, shuffling over to where she’s sitting at the table with her head buried in her hands. She looks up at Jake then, and Jake doesn’t think he will ever forget the look on her face, eyes a little teary and a little lost.

“Oh, Jake,” she murmurs and then pulls him into a crushing hug and buries her face in his small shoulders. Jake wraps one arm around his mom, the other continues to clutch his stuffed dinosaur to his chest, a feeling of dread growing in his little body.

Jake finally finds the courage to speak after realizing what was off about the house. “Mom, where’s dad’s stuff?”

It’s the first time he sees his mom cry.

Jake’s numb for the rest of the day, and for most of the next couple weeks.

He manages to talk to Amy that Tuesday, after having not come out to play with her and her brothers at all over Thanksgiving break.

They’re sitting on his bed when he tells her, Jake clutching his dinosaur and Amy clutching a pillow to her stomach. 

“Jake,” Amy murmurs, before abandoning the pillow to curl up beside Jake and hug him.

They sit like that when Jake’s sadness and confusion turns to anger. He sits up so suddenly that Amy is dislodged from his side and stares at him in questioning when he drops his dinosaur on the bed and stands up.

“I hate him!” Jake shouts.

Amy looks a little shocked but stands too.

“I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!” Jake continues to shout, anger shaking his body as he storms out of the room and towards his father’s old study.

Amy follows him and, when his hands are shaking too badly to do it, she pulls down that pristine white baseball and takes it out of the case, before offering it to Jake. He takes it and storms down the stairs and out to the backyard, but drops the ball a couple times as he tries to control his trembling hand. Finally Amy takes the ball and carries it for him as she follows him through the little wooded area behind their houses and across a small field to a pond.

Amy passes Jake the pristine white baseball from his father’s study, and Jake studies it for a moment before winding up and throwing it as far as he can. The baseball lands with a soft splash halfway across the pond, before being sucked to the bottom. Jake sits down heavily on his heels and buries his face in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Amy whispers from above him.

“It’s not your fault,” Jake whispers back, choking on a sob.

“I know,” Amy says softly, crouching beside him and wrapping an arm around his shaking back, “I just wish you could see the same thing.”

(He stays up late every night for the next two weeks, waiting for the call his father promised after they talked that first day, that day he saw his mom cry for the first time. Jake’s starting to get sick from staying up past midnight every night, waiting and waiting and waiting for a call that never comes. After Jake finally falls asleep around 12:15 that fifteenth day, Karen Peralta picks up the phone and calls Roger, intending to give her soon-to-be ex-husband a piece of her mind, only to find the line has been disconnected. She throws the phone against the wall with a strangled scream that originates from somewhere deep in her chest, cracking and sharp against her throat.)

(The call never comes that year.)

(Or the next.)

 

* * *

 

That Hanukkah isn’t as lonely as Jake had feared it would be. There’s no paper Christmas tree on his mom’s bedside table, nor is there any booming laughter from under the mistletoe that used to hang in the threshold between the kitchen and the living room, but Jake’s house is more filled with people than ever before. Jake’s nana had come to stay with him and his mom a couple days after his dad left, and she stays there all the way until New Years Day.

Jake gets to light the menorah that year (because, as his mom says, he’s old enough to not burn the house down this year), and he beats his nana for the first time ever while playing Dreidel (though she still beats him every other time), and when Amy has supper with them on the fourth night he gets to teach her _Ma’Oz Tzur_ (and secretly delights that for once it’s not him stumbling over the words of another language).

Gina and Auntie Darlene still spend Christmas with the Peralta’s, but this year Lynn and Charles and Cleo also come, and they have more Chinese food than Jake’s seen in his life (though there’s none of the usual weird Boyle food creations, a strict rule of Gina and Auntie Darlene to only have normal food for Christmas apparently), and Jake laughs more than he has any other Christmas, and definitely more than he has since Thanksgiving.

The doorbell rings just before they are about to start watching _Home Alone_ (a tradition between Gina and Jake and nana). Jake goes to answer it, and as he opens it Amy quickly steps into the house, bringing a swirl of snowflakes and cold air into the warm house.

“Close the door quickly,” Amy mumbles under her scarf, her cheeks bright pink and her glasses fogged up, “It’s freezing out there.” She pulls off her mittens to take her glasses off and squints at Jake with unfocused eyes. 

Jake shivers and slams the door shut, in complete agreement with her that it is far too cold outside.

“I know you don’t celebrate Christmas,” Amy says in lieu of a greeting, pushing her scarf off her face and shoving a perfectly wrapped present at him, “but I do and I got this for you,”

“Aw, thanks, Ames,” Jake says warmly. “You didn’t have to.”

Amy shrugs and rubs her glasses with a mitten, placing them back on her face with a slight frown; they’re defogged now but streaky from her mittens, though at least she can see again. “You didn’t have to get me that microscope for Hanukkah either but here we are,” she finally says with a grin.

Jake tears into the gift, only taking a moment to admire Amy’s perfect wrapping job, and then gasps in awe as he pulls out the toy firetruck he had mournfully left on the shelf when his mom dragged Jake and Amy away from the toy store a couple weeks ago.

“Ames!” he exclaims, “I can’t believe you got this.” He turns to her with a wide smile that softens when her meets her eyes. “Thank you,” he says earnestly, clutching the boxed firetruck in one hand to give her a hug.

There’s a loud gasp behind them, and they part and turn to find Charles grinning widely at them from down the hall, pointing above their heads. “Mistletoe,” he squeals, drawing the attention of Gina and Jake’s mom who wander into the hallway too.

They both look up and Jake blushes as red as Amy’s winter jacket; Amy’s cheeks, still pink from the cold, darken. “Auntie Darlene,” Jake mutters in embarrassment, because there is only one person in the house who would think putting up mistletoe was amusing (and only one person tall enough to do so).

“You’ve got to kiss her, Jakey,” Charles shrieks, and with each new word he utters his voice seems to climb into a register that’s only heard by dogs and Superman (or at least that’s how Jake remembers it).

Jake refuses to look at Amy, scared his face will catch fire if he does, and now Gina and his mom have started chanting for them to kiss and Jake’s just about to wish for a hole to open in the ground and swallow him up when he feels Amy move beside him, and then her lips are brushing his cheek and Jake’s face does catch fire just then and he nearly stops breathing altogether.

(Jake’s mom only shows him the picture she took years later when he visits her, ecstatic and happier than he’s ever been in his life, to tell her that Amy agreed to marry him. After she stops crying (and after Jake does too), she stands up on slightly creaky knees to retrieve a photo album so the two of them can look back on how it all started. 

His mom opens the album and a watery smile stretches across her face as she turns the photo album towards Jake, pointing at a moment frozen in time. It’s a slightly fuzzy picture of the two of them, seven years old and standing under a sprig of mistletoe, Jake in his Spiderman pjs and Amy bundled up in her bright red jacket, scarf wrinkled around her neck and slightly too big hat only held up by her glasses; Amy’s pressing a kiss to his cheek and their faces are about as red as Amy’s jacket, Jake clutching a toy firetruck, his eyes wide and a gasp caught on his face.

“That’s when I knew,” his mom says, reaching a hand up to cup the side of his face and run her thumb across the peak of his cheekbone, tears bright in her eyes, “That was the moment I knew you two would be together forever, whether in friendship or in love it didn’t really matter to me, I just knew you two would always be together.”)

 

* * *

 

Second grade ends and Jake’s thankful he doesn’t have to pretend that he’s fine or pretend he doesn’t see the teachers treating him differently, or make excuses for him when doesn’t do as well on his quizzes or acts out a little bit during class. Jake hasn’t really changed how he acts at school, but it feels like everyone around him has. He’s never been more thankful for his friends than he is that year when they treat him as if nothing’s changed.

“I’m glad I don’t have to do that dumb therapy anymore,” Jake declares loudly from beside Amy. They’re crouched in the mud by the pond behind their houses, through the wooded little area and across the small field, looking for frogs.

“Was it really that bad?” Amy asks, poking at the mud with a stick to keep her hands clean.

Jake shuffles forward, still crouched, so the water laps at the toes of his muddy boots. “It was just dumb. It was me and some other kids from fifth grade, a couple kindergarteners, and a fourth grader, and we all sat at this table in the preschool room and had these papers with different faces like a happy one and a mad one and a sad one and stuff and we had to colour in how we felt about our parents divorcing or whatever.”

Amy frowns at him. “How is that supposed to help?”

Jake throws his arms in the air, almost whacking Amy in the face and losing his own balance. “Exactly!” he shouts, before regaining his balance and running his hands through the cool water. “And there was this other one that was just an outline of a body and you were supposed to colour where you felt different emotions or something,” Jake complains.

“So you mean when you left class every week it was just to… Colour your feelings?” Amy asks, her face twisted in skepticism.

“Yeah basically,” Jake answers.

“That is dumb,” she agrees.

“Plus all the other kids always stare when Ms. Hillary comes to get me.”

Amy doesn’t really know what to say, since she knows that it’s true, all the kids stare at Jake when he gets up in the middle of class and go with the school therapist, and everyone knows what he’s going to do. 

“Why didn’t you tell your mom you didn’t want to do it?” Amy finally asks.

Jake shrugs and tosses a small pebble into the water. “She was so happy when I said I’d try it and she thought it would help and I didn’t want her to be sad if I said it wasn’t helping.”

Amy nods and smiles at him. “You’re a good son, Jake.”

Jake blushes and rubs at the centre of his chest. “Yeah, well,” he says.

Amy grins at him. “And you’ve attracted a frog,” she points at Jake’s knee and he looks down to find a frog perched on his knee, startling Jake so much when it croaks that he does fall backwards onto his butt.

Jake likes to pretend his scream is dignified, but Amy assures him that it really, _really_ wasn’t.

(Amy doesn’t tell Jake until years later, but she got her first ever detention getting into a fight with some other second grader who starts making fun of her best friend for needing therapy while Jake was home sick. Her papá is disappointed in her when she comes home, but when her teacher calls her parents to explain the situation, Amy’s mamá sneaks her a cookie and warns her to not sucker punch anyone else, even if they do deserve it.)

 

* * *

 

Amy and Jake celebrate their eighth birthday together, and Jake tries not to be disappointed when his father doesn’t show up or call (though he’s also not surprised considering all he’s got in the past nine months is nothing).

Amy gets him  _Donkey Kong_ for his Gameboy and a baseball that year, and they start a tradition of throwing a baseball in the pond every year his father doesn’t call him (there are far too many baseballs in that pond by the time Jake and Amy move away for college).

Jake and his mom get Amy a telescope, and Amy is so delighted by the gift that she kisses his cheek in front of all their friends and family and Jake’s face goes pink all the way to his ears.

(Jake pretends his stomach doesn’t flip when her lips brush his cheek; Jake won’t find out until years later, but Amy pretends the same thing.)

 

* * *

 

Third grade is Jake’s favourite year so far. They have a slightly crazy teacher who loves doing messy arts and crafts with the kids so much that sometimes they skip math class to do a new project, and Jake loves that their teacher loves that (and not just because he sucks at math). And even though Jake struggles with his multiplication tables and his writing, Amy helps him with his math and deciphers the smudges he calls handwriting for their teacher.

His mom gets a second job as a night waitress on top of being the high school art teacher, and Jake spends more and more time at Gina’s and his nana’s and the Santiago Álvarez’s, and he’s glad that there’s so many people around him because he thinks he would be very lonely if it was just his mom and him.

(In a different universe, Jake _is_ mostly alone while his mom works harder and harder to try and make ends meet, but in both universes he still ends up with his dream job, amazing friends, and a woman he loves more than anything, so it’s alright.)

 

* * *

 

The December of third grade Amy tells him that her mamá is pregnant with another baby. They’re sitting in their snow fort under the oak tree, which is surprisingly warm considering that their fort is more or less just ice. Though it could be the fact that Amy’s mamá made them hot chocolate to take outside and Amy is pressed against his side (though it probably isn’t Amy because she’s like a human ice box on a good day).

“Mamá’s pregnant again,” Amy murmurs, so quiet Jake has to lean close to hear her. 

“You’re going to have _another_ sibling?” Jake asks. Amy nods and doesn’t meet his eyes. “Are you—” he starts and then stops, thinking hard, “Are you happy about it?”

Amy huffs out a sigh that sounds more frustrated than anything, glancing away from him. “I don’t know.”

“Oh,” Jake says.

“Yeah,” Amy replies.

They’re silent for a long while, watching the soft snow fall around the relative shelter of the barren oak tree. They’re silent until Jake has almost finished his hot chocolate while Amy’s is still fogging up her glasses. They’re silent until Jake’s butt starts to get wet and cold and numb through his snow pants.

“It’s not that I won’t be happy with another brother or a sister,” Amy finally says, still staring blankly across the yard. “It’s just that—” she sighs in frustration again and drops her head back to the oak tree. “It’s just that I already have five brothers and sometimes I feel like I’m forgotten in the craziness, you know?”

Jake just nods, unsure what the right thing to say is.

“I mean I know mamá and papá love me,” Amy continues, “but I can’t help but wonder if there’s enough love for another child. Or if they’ll have to take some of my love away for the new baby.”

Jake turns to look at his best friend, but she continues to stare across the yard, working herself into a panic. 

“Hey,” he finally says when Amy takes a deep breath. “I won’t forget you.”

Amy is slow to smile, but when she does it’s almost blinding in its brilliance and she throws her arms around his shoulders, hot chocolate forgotten. 

“Thank you, Jake,” she whispers into his ear, voice muffled by his hat, and his smile is almost blinding too.

(Amy takes back all her worries when Rafael, Fico declares him Rafi once they bring him home, is born that April, and she doesn’t stop gushing to Jake about her new baby brother and how he seems to be permanently grumpy and she loves it and him for weeks.)

 

* * *

 

The summer before fourth grade is almost their last summer in the same year, and Jake won’t admit it but he’s a little scared of the prospect of going to class without Amy right there beside him.

Jake finds Amy the afternoon before their ninth birthday party sitting gloomily under the oak tree in her backyard. Ed is inside preparing for eighth grade by reading like a nerd, and Luís and Andrés had biked to the park earlier, leaving Jake and Amy and her younger siblings at home with her mamá inside baking their birthday cakes and her papá bouncing a screaming Manny on his hip while Rafi stands on the edge of the deck and pouts.

Amy is staring blankly across the yard and, for once, Jake waits until she’s ready to speak. He can’t help but feel like there’s something different about this afternoon, something serious. After what feels like an eternity, Amy drops her head to his shoulder, burying her face in the soft fabric of his _Star Wars_ t-shirt.

“They want me to skip fourth grade,” she finally murmurs into his shoulder.

Jake’s chest tightens and he can’t imagine a school where she wasn’t in his class, but he manages a small smile. “Are you going to do it?” he asks, dreading the answer.

“I don’t know,” she replies, turning her face so she can watch Herbie and Fico chase each other around the yard; she still leaves her head on his shoulder though. “It would be more challenging,” she admits. “And I’d be in Rosa’s class so I know I wouldn’t get made fun of for being younger with her there.”

“Yeah,” Jake agrees, ripping a blade of grass into tiny pieces. “And you love challenges,” he says softly.

They’re both silent for a long while. Fico finally catches Herbie and struggles to lift his little brother off the ground and swing him around. Herbie shrieks with laughter and claps his hands above his head, looking like he’s trying to fly.

“I don’t want to do it,” Amy finally says firmly, and Jake’s heart both soars and drops.

“What? Why?” he manages to ask, turning towards her and dislodging her head from his shoulder.

She sits up straight too, turning so she’s sitting crossed legged in front of him. “What if when I skip fourth grade everything changes between us? I don’t want to mess up our friendship by skipping a grade and not being in your class.”

Jake swallows and drops the grass he was shredding, finally looking up to her face to find her dark eyes wide and worried behind her glasses. “Ames, I’ve always known you were smarter than me. This is what you’ve always wanted, something that will actually challenge you in school.” Amy’s brows crease together and he leans closer to her. “You can’t be afraid to leave me behind. You’re always going to be my best friend, even if we’re in different grades.”

Amy’s face softens at that, and Jake blushes all the way up to the roots of his curly hair. “You’re always going to be my best friend too,” she says, and the smile on her face makes his palms a little sweaty. “But I’m still not going to do it.”

Jake can’t help the relief that floods him, but he ignores it. “What? Why? Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?”

Amy shakes her head and grins at him. “What would I do without you and Gina to tease me and also prank anyone else who tries to?” Jake laughs as his stomach settles and he feels lighter than air. “Besides, someone’s gotta be there to clean up after the two of you.”

(They’ll have a similar conversation in about twenty years, when Amy is scared to take the sergeant’s test and change their relationship; Jake will tell her the same thing, but that time Amy will thank him with a kiss and an _I love you_.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did exactly the same therapy Jake did in grade four when my dad left and it was honestly the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. It didn’t help any of the kids there and just ostracized us even more because the therapist always came to get us in the middle of class and we went back in the middle of the next class so everyone in your class knew exactly what and why you were missing and just teased us even more for being screwed up and needing therapy. Like colouring a frowny face with blue crayons next to some kids I barely knew was going to be a legitimate coping strategy lmaoooo.


	3. with days like these (there's nothing we can't do)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grade 4 — Grade 5
> 
> My anthro prof (bless her soul tbh) moved the due date of my research paper from Monday to November 10, so as celebration I got pizza from this delicious local pizza parlour (oh, and I finished this chapter too I guess).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Edit November 29:** So I've been going through a very serious family emergency lately and between trying to stay caught up on school work and dealing with that I've had no free time. I'm not abandoning this work, but I am taking an indefinite break from it (and possibly other writing) probably up until I'm done this semester. Writing is usually something that calms me down but lately it's just been adding more stress than I need. 
> 
> Basically, my kid sister is facing a very possible diagnosis of bone cancer and, honestly, I just haven't been in the right frame of mind to write, let alone write anything happy, which was the intention of this fic. This is being put on hold definitely until mid-December, and possibly even later until we figure out what is going on. I don't know when I'll have the motivation to write again because my mind hasn't really been right since I found out she has a tumour eating at her tibia, and it might take days or weeks or months, but I will eventually finish this.

The winter of fourth grade Amy helps him ace his spelling test and he’s never been more proud of a grade in his entire life (plus he knows an A+ is worth at _least_ an ice cream cone from his mom).

“Mamá’s pregnant again,” Amy tells Jake on the way home that day. They’ve fallen behind Fico and Herbie now, who are the only two of Amy’s brothers still at elementary school with them; Fico’s in first grade and Herbie’s in preschool. He’s the first Santiago Álvarez sibling to go to preschool because, while it is expensive for Amy’s parents, it is also cheaper than sending him to daycare with Rafi or having a babysitter. 

“Oh?” Jake says, remembering how she felt when she heard about Rafi. “How are you dealing with it this time?”

Amy is silent for half a block before she looks up at him with a smile. “As long as you’re still my best friend and won’t forget me, I’m happy about the new baby.”

Jake grins and hops up on the short stone wall at the end of the Johnson’s house. “I’m glad.”

When Manny is born at the end of that June, Amy pounds on his front door with a tear streaked face. Jake doesn’t know what to do so he screams for his mom, who, upon seeing how distraught Amy is, quickly ushers the two kids inside and sits Amy down on the couch.

“Amy, honey, what’s wrong?”

Between sobs, Amy manages to explain that her mamá went into labour but it is too early and there was a lot of blood and her papá drove them to the hospital and Ed is trying to calm the other kids and Luís and Andrés are at their abuelo’s right now so it’s just Ed and her and the other three boys and could you please come and help calm the others and—

It’s at this point that Karen Peralta, having understood most of what Amy has said, realizes the seriousness of the situation and scoops the nearly hysterical eight year old into a tight hug, before taking her hand and walking the three of them back over to the Santiago Álvarez household. There they find an equally distraught Ed trying to calm his crying brothers. Jake’s mom quickly takes charge and quiets the three youngest Santiago Álvarez brothers with some sandwiches and a movie. Ed and Amy and Jake sit at the table with Jake’s mom, who tries to explain to the older kids that the hospital was the best place for their mamá and new baby brother or sister.

Their papá comes home late that night to find his oldest son and only daughter curled up with Jake on the couch, fast asleep with the movie they were watching still casting blue light across the living room, and his neighbour and friend Karen marking sketchbooks at the kitchen table.

Karen immediately puts down her pen upon seeing Victor and leans forward, quietly telling him that the younger kids are all in bed but Ed and Amy wanted to wait up for him.

Victor smiles tiredly and sinks down into a chair. “I do not know how to thank you for coming over and looking after the kids. I knew Ed could manage it, but he is only thirteen, and seeing his mamá like that,” he scrubs a hand over his face, “I cannot imagine.”

Neither of them notice Amy and Jake standing in the shadows of the doorframe, silently listening to their parents talk.

“How is Camila?” Karen asks quietly.

Victor manages a smile. “Her and the baby are alive.”

Karen’s face breaks into a smile. “Victor, that’s great. Congratulations.”

Victor’s smile fades a little, and he looks away from his neighbour to take a heavy breath. “It was really close there for a while. They had to do an emergency c-section and we almost lost the two of them there.”

Karen’s gasp cover’s up Amy’s half-sob, and Jake puts an arm around her both as a warning and for comfort.

“He is only twenty-eight weeks,” Victor continues, “and they found a problem in one of his ears, think he might be deaf, but he is alive and healthy other than that. That is all that matters to me.”

Karen briefly rests a hand on Victor’s arm in comfort. “Will he be in the NICU long?”

Victor shrugs. “It depends on how fast he grows; once he is a healthy weight we can bring him home.”

They’re both silent for a while, still unaware of the two kids half-hugging each other in the doorway.

“So,” Karen finally says with another grin, “another son.”

Victor’s smile turns soft and Karen knows exactly what he’s feeling, remembering holding Jake for the first time moments after his birth and realizing that she could never love anyone or anything more than she did this screaming baby she had only just laid eyes on. “Manolo,” he says, “it means ‘God is with us.’” 

Karen smiles. “It’s a beautiful name, very fitting.”

Victor murmurs his thanks and then chokes out a laugh and shakes his head. “God help us, another son.”

Karen chuckles, and finally catches sight of Amy and Jake, but doesn’t say anything. “Amy seemed pretty set on a sister.”

Victor shakes his head with a small grin. “I think Amada is a once in a lifetime miracle considering we have six, now seven, boys.” Victor leans towards Karen, his grin spreading. “Besides, I do not know if I could handle another daughter if she was anything like Amada,” he says before turning to the doorway and fixing Jake and Amy with a soft smile. “Come out you two.”

Amy runs to throw her arms around her papá while Jake moves to stand by his mom. “I’m glad mamá and Manny are okay,” she mumbles into his neck.

Her papá laughs. “Manny? _Mija,_ he is not not even a day old and you have already given him a nickname?”

“Of course,” Amy says, pulling back from her papá but staying inside his warm embrace. “Everyone in this family needs to have one, except the twins.”

“Well, they are often the exception to every rule,” he agrees with fond exasperation.

Karen checks her watch and sighs. “We need to get home and get you to bed, mister,” Karen says, ruffling Jake’s hair. “You have a dentist appointment tomorrow and we need to go shopping for nana’s birthday.”

Jake pouts but follows his mom to the door. They are stopped by Amy and her papá, and while Amy’s papá thanks Jake’s mom again, Amy throws her arms around Jake. “Thank you for coming and keeping my mind of my mamá,” she says.

Jake grins into her hair. “Hey, what are best friends for?”

(The next day Amy comes home from the hospital with a picture of the smallest baby Jake has ever seen; Jake comes home with three cavities and Amy fixes him with an _I-told-you-so_ look, and while he knows he probably should have listened to her about flossing more, it’s much more fun to tease her about her dental care habits than to actually follow them.)

 

* * *

 

Since Gina’s in their class again, and the three of them are inseparable. Amy still grumbles, but she’s even better at being a lookout than before and has got down distracting the teacher easily. No one ever expects the student’s pet Amy to be in on all the devious schemes and pranks that Gina and Jake pull, which is what makes her a perfect accomplice.

It’s after one of these pranks goes awry that Gina and Jake are sitting in detention during their lunch hour. The sun is bright and hot in one of the first nice days of spring, and Gina and Jake are stuck inside with Mr. McGintley, who always falls asleep about two and a half minutes into detention.

Gina groans and bangs her head on her desk. “This is so boring,” she whines, dragging her words out. 

“Well you should’ve been faster,” a voice says at the window, and Gina and Jake both jump and turn to the open window to find Amy grinning at them. 

Jake huffs and tosses his head. Lately his mom has been busy with extra shifts at the diner and staying up too late to mark her students’ art and she hasn’t had time to book him a haircut yet, so his hair hangs in heavy curls over his forehead; but it’s okay because Jake secretly thinks it made him look like a cool middle schooler. (Also Amy likes to play with it when they’re watching a movie and it feels really nice when she brushes out the knots and braids it.)

“You should have been a better lookout,” Jake retorts.

Amy rolls her eyes, “You told me to watch out for teachers, not tattletale first graders.

Gina stands and saunters over to the window. “Not that I don’t _love_ listening to you two argue—”

“We don’t argue!” Jake and Amy interrupt in synch.

“I have a detention to break out of,” Gina continues as if they hadn’t spoken.

Charles pops up beside Amy, looking around nervously. Charles always wants to help with their pranks, but he is terribly uncoordinated and a terrible lookout (though he is amazingly good at distractions when needed, especially those distractions involving food and/or drinks). “Rosa made it through the halls unnoticed,” he explains, glancing nervously over his shoulder again. “She’s picking the lock to the door right now.”

And on cue, the classroom door pops open and reveals Rosa crouched in the doorway, pushing two bobby pins back into her hair with a grin. Jake and Gina whoop quietly, even if a train bearing down on them couldn’t wake Mr. McGintley.

As the group of friends gather outside again Jake throws an arm around Charles and grins at Rosa, “You know, I’m going to miss you guys next year when you’re off to middle school.”

Charles gets a little teary at the reminder that his elementary school career is ending. “I’m going to miss you too, man,” he bawls, burying his face in Jake’s shoulder and wetting the plaid fabric, before turning to encompass the whole group, “all of you.” Jake rubs Charles’ shoulder comfortingly, wincing slightly at his now damp shoulder.

Gina rolls her eyes, but nudges Charles with her elbow, a small smile playing at her lips. “I live across the hall from you, doofus.”

Charles sniffles. “It’s not the same.”

“Look at it this way,” Amy suggests from Jake’s other side, “you two will have a year on us in middle school and you can tell us all about what to do and who to avoid.”

Charles brightens at that. “We’ll be like spies on a long mission,” he exclaims, more than a little excited at the prospect.

“Hmm,” Amy agrees with a small smile. “Besides, it’s only one year.”

“You know, I’ll miss you losers too,” Rosa says without any bite, and then she punches Charles in the shoulder, “At least I’ll have one good friend with me.”

Charles grins and rubs his shoulder, but doesn’t blush and swoon like he usually does. “Aw thanks, Rosa, I’m glad I’ll have an amazing friend too.”

Rosa rolls her eyes but her friends catch the grin spreading across her face as she turns away. “Don’t push it,” she warns.

“Dude what happened to your crush on Rosa?” Jake hisses in Charles’ ear.

Charles shrugs. “I realized how annoying I was being so I said sorry and asked if we could restart as friends. Plus, I think our friendship is more important than my crush on her ever was.”

Jake pats Charles on the back. “Good for you, man, I’m proud of you.”

(If Jake’s being honest with himself, it’s this conversation that stays in his mind years later. He wouldn’t trade Amy’s friendship for anything, and once they reach high school he can’t help but feel that his crush on her is insignificant compared to being her best friend; little does Jake know but it’s this conversation that stays stuck in Amy’s mind years later too, when she’s struggling with the same thing.)

 

* * *

 

On their tenth birthday, Rosa brings along a sixth, soon to be seventh, grader named Adrian Pimento, and Gina instantly dislikes him.

“He’s weird,” Gina hisses to Jake while they wait for Amy to try and wrestle a sobbing Rafi into his fancy clothes upstairs; if he didn’t know any better, Jake would think Amy was trying to throw her brother out the window from the sounds the toddler was making.

Jake shrugs, and shoves some chips into his mouth. “I heard he purposefully crashed his bike into the school to get detention so he wouldn’t have to go play outside in the snow,” he mumbles around his mouthful, “Sounds pretty cool to me.”

Gina stares at him in disgust. “You’re hopeless.”

“What?” Jake protests.

Amy finally stumbles down the stairs, balancing the permanently grumpy toddler on her hip. Rafi’s eyes are narrowed at his sister, before he turns his face from her and sticks his nose in the air dramatically. Amy rolls her eyes and tickles Rafi, who determinedly tries to ignore her until he bursts into giggles. Amy finally sets her brother down on the floor and Rafi toddles over to Jake on unsteady legs, knowing that their neighbour will sneak him snacks when no one is looking. Amy pretends she doesn’t see Jake breaking off tiny pieces of his chip to give to the toddler.

“Amy!” Gina exclaims, and Amy takes a hesitant step back, recognizing the glint in Gina’s eye that means she’s going to get what she wants no matter the cost.

“Gina!” Amy exclaims back, considerably less than enthusiastic.

Gina leaps up and grabs Amy’s arm, dragging her too the kitchen window that overlooked her backyard. “Pimento,” Gina orders, sticking a finger to the window and ignoring Amy’s protests that she’ll get it dirty, “Spill.”

Amy sighs and squints out the window into the sun. “He’s joined seventh grade in the middle of the year. Moved around a lot as a kid. Nobody really knows much about him except that he’s super weird and doesn’t make a lot of sense. Rumours say he stabbed a kid at his last school for looking at him but he actually only got in a fight with the other kid for butting in front of some sixth graders.”

“Hmm,” Gina says.

“He still got expelled for it ‘cause I guess he went a little,” Amy trails off for a second, thinking hard, “overboard,” she decides on, “during the fight.”

Jake stares at his two best friends in amazement. “How in the world do you know all this?”

Amy glances at him and blushes a little, the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window casting the long shadows from her eyelashes across her face. “People don’t usually notice me if I’m reading a book so I hear a lot of gossip from the other kids and teachers.”

“Dude!” Jake exclaims, “You’ve been holding out on me.”

Amy just smirks at him, before Gina is wrapping an arm around her shoulder and turning her back to the window. “What else?” she demands.

Amy frowns, thinking hard, and Jake scoops up Rafi, keeping him contented with a bite of Jake’s cookie, and walks towards the window too, finally getting a good look at the older kid.

Pimento’s hair is even more of a mess of wild curls than Jake’s is, sticking up like he had stuck a fork in an electrical outlet one too many times. Even Luís and Andrés, who usually flock to other troublemakers like moths to a flame, are giving the kid a wide berth. Almost as if he senses that people are watching him, Pimento’s head snaps towards the window, seemingly catching Jake’s eye even though Jake knows how difficult it is to see into the kitchen from outside at this time of day. Jake’s thankfully distracted by Rafi demanding more cookie and cuts the eye contact to break off another piece of cookie and feed it to the toddler on his hip.

“Hmm,” Amy hums, and Jake recognizes the look on her face from when she’s working through a spelling test that Jake knows he’s going to fail anyways so he doesn’t bother with it (he also knows Amy’s going to get one-hundred percent on it so he doesn’t really know why she worries so much). Jake chuckles a little at how serious she’s taking this, until Gina whips her head to glare at him. Jake holds a hand up in surrender, tightening his hold on Rafi for protection. Jake’s not really sure how he became best friends with three of the (in his modest opinion) scariest girls at school, but he’s both glad he has them watching his back and terrified they’re going to eat him alive.

“Rumour is he’s got a crush on Rosa,” Amy finally remembers, “They play at the park on their street together apparently.” 

Gina grumbles a little at this answer and carefully picks at some glitter under her nails. “Anything else?”

Amy shakes her head. “Not that I can think of.”

Rafi decides that Jake isn’t paying him enough attention and grabs at his nose, letting half chewed cookie fall out of his tiny mouth onto Jake’s shirt when he opens his mouth and screams. “Rafi,” Amy complains, walking around Gina to take her now screaming brother from Jake.

“I know I always tease you about making me chew with my mouth closed,” Jake admits as Amy hands him a napkin, “but now I see why you find it disgusting.”

Amy snorts and shifts Rafi to her other hip; Rafi stops screaming because he’s too busy pulling on Amy’s ponytail. “Don’t you know by now that I’m always right.”

“Stop being weird you too,” Gina hisses, and they resume watching Pimento through the window. Pimento’s standing beside Rosa under the oak tree, close enough that their shoulders brush, and Jake holds his breath, for what he’s not sure.

He soon finds out when Pimento leans over and kisses Rosa on the lips, which Jake thinks is pretty gross, until he looks over at Gina to complain only to find her standing beside him, perfectly still. Jake catches the devastated look on her face for a split second before she turns and walks briskly up the stairs and to the room Amy shares with Ed. Amy catches Jake’s eye and shrugs, worriedly chewing on her lip as she follows Jake up the stairs after their friend.

The door is open, but Gina has thrown herself onto the bed, a deep frown etched onto her face. Amy sets Rafi down and he toddles towards Gina, patting her knee before wandering off to explore Ed’s bed. Jake sits down hesitantly beside Gina, unsure of himself because he’s never seen her like this before. “You okay, goose?” he finally asks.

Gina laughs but it comes out harsh and sharp. “Just peachy, lil’ pup.”

Amy moves to stand in front of Jake and Gina, but keeps one eye on her little brother. “Is this about your—” Amy breaks off and her eyes shoot to Jake’s for a split second before she changes her sentence half way through, “I mean that thing?”

Gina scowls at Amy but nods reluctantly. “Aw, Gina, I’m really sorry,” Amy offers, and Gina just nods sharply again.

“Why are you so worried about Pimento kissing Rosa?” Jake asks. “I mean it’s not like—” Jake stops talking abruptly as Amy kicks him in the shin. “Ow! What was that for?” he demands. Amy rolls her eyes, and then chases after Rafi who is currently trying to pull down a book that’s nearly half his size off Amy’s bookshelf and onto his head. “Wait a second,” Jake turns to Gina. “You don’t have a cru—”

Gina turns and punches him in the arm, ignoring his pained complaint. “Shut up, doofus. Don’t even say it out loud.”

Jake’s mouth falls open as he stares at Gina. “That’s why you’re so curious about Pimento.”

Gina’s scowl deepens, but she doesn’t disagree. Amy finally wrestles the book away from Rafi, who turns to start pulling open Amy’s drawer and throw socks around the room. Amy groans and chases her brother, finally catching him and scooping him up before moving to sit on Gina’s other side. “I’m sorry, Gina,” Amy murmurs, her face turned away to stop Rafi from putting tiny fingerprints all over her glasses.

Gina pulls her knees too her chest, bare feet crossed at the ankles. “It’s fine. I’m just being dumb anyways.”

“Hey,” Jake says, placing an arm around his oldest friend, “they’re your feelings and they aren’t dumb.” Gina makes a non-committal grunt and sighs. Rafi stops trying to get Amy’s glasses and crawls out of her lap to give Gina a hug. A small smile pulls at Gina’s mouth as she buries her face in Rafi’s thick hair. Jake and Amy look at each other in surprise over Gina’s bent head with mirrored expressions of shock. Rafi even makes a fuss out of hugging his mamá (or he does as long as he thinks someone is watching, he’s a sucker for cuddles when no one else is around) so him hugging Gina without prompting is revolutionary.

Eventually Gina sighs again and unwinds herself from Rafi to stand, but Rafi is having none of it and demands to be picked up, but only by Gina. That small, gentle smile pulls at Gina’s face again as she cuddles him close before resting him on her hip. “You know,” she tells Amy as they walk out the door, “he’s pretty cute when he’s not scowling at you.”

“Yeah,” Amy agrees softly, still in shock over Rafi voluntarily wanting hugs, and from Gina no less, who usually finds babies kind of gross and squishy on the best of days.

“It’ll go away eventually like my other crushes do,” Gina says with a wave of her purple nails as they reach the bottom of the stairs. “I mean, I used to have a small crush on _Charles_ and now he’s my brother.”

Jake and Amy look at each other gleefully. “You had a _crush_ on _Charles_ ,” they exclaim in synch.

Gina’s eyes widen in a panic, and she whips her head around to glare at them; Rafi glances at her in surprise and imitates her to glare at his sister and neighbour. “You tell _anyone,_ ” she hisses, “ _especially_ Charles, or you’re both dead to me.”

Amy and Jake grin at each other but cross their hearts and zip their lips.

(For the rest of the night Rafi almost constantly holds Gina’s hand and shoots the meanest glare the grumpy two year-old can muster at Pimento, which for Rafi is pretty scary. While they are eating birthday cake, Rafi scoops up a handful of his and throws it at Pimento as he walks by; Amy’s parents are apologetic to Pimento, unsure of what has come over their second youngest son, but Gina laughs and sneaks some of her cake onto Rafi’s plate when his mamá and papá aren’t looking.)

 

* * *

 

Gina’s in their grade five class again, and her, Jake, and Amy have near perfected their routine, made all the more efficient with Amy’s vast knowledge of school gossip. Rosa and Charles being gone means that they can’t break out of detention as easily anymore, but during the warm spring that year they just jump out the window once Mr. McGintley is asleep.

Mr. McGintley is also their fifth grade teacher, and he is so unobservant that he barely bats an eye when he opens his desk drawer and is showered in glitter; he just opens his lunch and eats it, glitter and all.

Jake isn’t as sad to be leaving elementary school as he thought he would be. Rosa and Charles are already at middle school, and his other two best friends will be joining him. Plus, his mom let him stop going to group therapy halfway through fourth grade when Jake finally admitted how awful it was, and she instead picked up some extra shifts at the diner and paid the slightly more expensive fee for him to go see the school counsellor for the older kids one on one. This therapist is an older woman named Wanda, who somehow knows Jake’s nana from when they were both young, and who Jake likes much more than the group therapy. Wanda doesn’t make him colour anything unless he wants to, and she doesn’t force him to talk about his feelings unless he wants to, and Jake finds that as the year goes on it becomes easier and easier to talk to Wanda about his dad without her prompting him. As an added bonus that makes Wanda even more awesome, she gives him candy or a sticker after every session and doesn’t pick him up for therapy when everyone in the class can stare. 

She’s the one thing Jake will miss about elementary school, until he finds out that she’s been hired as the middle school counsellor for the next year and Jake secretly celebrates this.

When his mom asks him how therapy has been going, and makes him promise to tell her the truth, Jake can honestly say that it has been good, better than good, in fact. He’s felt happier than he has since his father left and never ever called again, and Jake finds himself thinking about his father with less anger than he did before; there’s still bouts of bitterness towards him, and Jake and Amy continue throwing baseballs in the lake year after year, but even Jake can admit that it’s not as bad as they used to be. (It doesn’t hurt that his mom takes him out for ice cream after he’s admitted this.)

It’s after Wanda tells him that she’ll be moving to the middle school the next year and Jake feels light and happy, that Jake shares the small package of Swedish Berries from Wanda with Amy during afternoon recess.

“We’re graduating elementary school,” Amy says from beside him atop the monkey bars, rolling a Swedish Berry between her thumb and forefinger before tossing it into her mouth. 

Jake swings his leg and hopes he tied his shoes tight enough this time so they won’t fall off again. “I know. It’s crazy right?” He offers Amy the last Swedish Berry, but when she refuses he simply shrugs and pops it in his mouth.

Amy swings her body down until she’s hanging upside down by her knees, her pigtails trailing towards the ground. “I can’t believe that we’re going to be middle schoolers soon.”

Jake swings down beside her. “Rosa and Charles said that they only get one recess. Can you imagine? _One_ recess.” 

Amy turns her head towards him. “I’m kinda excited though,” she admits. “Like really super nervous, but excited.”

Jake nods quickly, and then stops as he starts to get lightheaded. “Me too,” he says with a grin, frowning when Amy starts to giggle at him. “What?” he demands.

Amy flicks his nose with a finger. “Your face is all red from hanging upside down.”

“Wha—?” Jake slaps at his face, frowning before sitting up abruptly. He wobbles a little as the blood drains from his head. “Wow,” he mumbles as Amy sits up beside, “that feels wild.”

Amy reaches out a hand to steady him. “Careful,” she warns, “We still have the water gun fight tomorrow before the last day of school and I need someone watching my back who isn’t in the hospital because his head’s bleeding.”

Jake shoots Amy a lopsided grin. “I’ll be fine. Besides, a little hospital trip wouldn’t stop me from being your partner.”

Amy doesn’t quite meet his eyes, but a small, soft smile spreads across her face as she nods. Jake is about to continue, when his eyes catch something over Amy’s shoulder. “Wow,” he mutters.

“What?”

Jake points behind her and she twists around, eyes widening in surprise. “But that’s—”

“Gina and Milton,” Jake agrees.

“But he’s—”

“A distant cousin of Charles.”

“But I mean—”

“Technically they’re not related.”

“But I thought Gina still—” Amy starts, frowning, “I mean her and Rosa.”

Jake shrugs a little, smoothing a hand over the middle of his chest. “I think Rosa’s been hanging out with Pimento a lot.”

“Oh,” says Amy.

“Yeah,” Jake agrees.

“Yeah,” Amy repeats, watching as Milton takes Gina’s hand while they sit in the wooden frame of the house on the other side of the playground.

Jake recognizes Gina’s glare even from so far away and tugs on Amy’s hand so she’s facing him again. “I guess Gina got over her crush on Rosa by now,” he says. Amy nods and frowns, a small line appears between her eyebrows. “What is it?” Jake asks.

“Oh it’s just—” Amy starts and then stops abruptly. 

“What?” Jake prompts.

“Oh nothing,” Amy says with an apologetic smile. “I just promised someone I wouldn’t say anything.”

“Even to your best friend?” Jake teases, nudging Amy gently with his elbow.

Amy grins at him regretfully. “I promised I wouldn’t say anything _especially_ to my best friend,” Amy says. “Sorry.”

Jake has to admit, he’s curious, but he also knows Amy would never break a promise, and he respects that and her too much to be hurt by her refusal to tell him. “It’s okay, Ames, I’m just teasing you.”

“I know, but I’m still sorry. I trust you more than anyone,” Amy admits, and Jake feels his face flush, “but I promised.”

The bell rings and the recess supervisor for the area that Jake and Amy were in, Mr. McGintley, finally notices them perched atop the monkey bars. “Hey kids get down from there,” he calls, moving towards them lazily, “It’s dangerous.”

“Yeah so is sleeping as much as you do,” Jake mutters as he swings down the monkey bars, landing slightly awkwardly on the ground.

Amy slaps a hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles as she climbs down after him. “Jake,” she admonishes, swatting at his shoulder when she lands beside him, but her scolding tone is offset by the laughter escaping through her fingers, “That’s not very nice.”

“I know!” Jake says brightly, grinning at her and slinging his arm around her shoulder as they follow the stream of other kids towards the school. “But in two days we’ll be out of here forever

(Jake’s mom cries at the ceremony for the fifth graders leaving that year and Amy’s parents take so many pictures that Jake’s pretty sure he’s been blinded by the flash and Auntie Darlene blows bubbles through the gym (the teachers are more than a little frustrated they can’t find the source of the bubbles floating around the room and distracting the kindergarteners). Gina and Jake and Amy all get to wear cool hats and throw them up in the air as high as they can when the principal wishes them the best and Wanda hugs him and promises to see him next year and Charles and Rosa get to sleepover with the former elementary schoolers at Jake’s house that night and Jake has such a fun time that he doesn’t even realize that his father wasn’t there until the next day.

And then his mom makes chocolate chip pancakes and Jake realizes that he doesn’t need to hear from his father to be happy anymore.)

 

* * *

 

On their eleventh birthday, after months and months of begging, Amy’s parents and Jake’s mom finally let them pitch a tent in Amy’s backyard underneath the oak tree and have a sleepover out there, just the two of them, without her brothers running all over her room while Jake and Amy try to play Pokémon on her bed.

After their birthday party with all their friends and family, Amy’s papá directs them in how to pitch the tent but lets them do all the work; it ends up a little saggy on the left side and they’re missing a peg, but the Jake and Amy have never been prouder of anything they’ve created. Amy’s papá hugs them both and wishes them a happy birthday, before assuring them that he’ll be right inside if they need anything. Jake and Amy nod seriously, but once he’s disappeared inside they turn and high five each other with wide grins.

It’s nearing nine o’clock when the sun finally starts to set, and Jake and Amy finally get up off the grass from watching the fireflies dance in the evening sunlight to crawl into their tent. If Jake sits up too straight his head brushes the sagging tent, so he crawls straight into his sleeping bag, grinning as Amy zips the tent shut and crawls into her sleeping bag too, and then proceeds to pile about three more blankets on top of her too.

“It’s not even that cold,” he teases her, propping himself up on his elbow; the dying sunlight casts the green tent in dark half light, and it takes Jake’s eyes a minute to adjust to the light, and when they do he bursts out laughing.

Amy frowns at him, her face the only part of her body that isn’t covered by blankets, though Jake suspects that’s only because of the nuisance of breathing doesn’t allow her to bury herself further. “Shut up, butthead,” she mutters back, but there’s no bite in her words so Jake settles back onto his back, staring at the dusky shadows clinging to the roof of the tent.

Amy’s quiet for so long that the sun has completely set, casting the tent in near blackness, and Jake’s pretty sure she’s fallen asleep already, so when she murmurs his name, Jake jumps and knocks his feet against the side of the tent, sending their small shelter rattling. Amy giggles at him and Jake grumbles good-naturedly and scoots closer to Amy by the middle of the tent. Amy’s laughter trails off and the silence is nearly as heavy as the darkness and it makes something under Jake’s skin itch.

“What if we aren’t in the same class next year?” Amy finally murmurs, the darkness distorting her voice and making her seem both close by him and too far away.

“We’ve been in the same class since kindergarten. We’re batting six for six here,” Jake teases, trying to hide the fact that he’s been having the same fears.

He can hear Amy shift beside him, and suddenly her voice is a lot closer, the scent of her cinnamon flavoured toothpaste filling his nose as her breath fans across his face on a sigh. “I just don’t know what I’d do without you there.”

“Amazing?” Jake jokes softly. “You never needed me to do well in class, Ames.”

The gentle whack to his shoulder surprises him in the darkness. “I know I’ll do well in _schoolwork_ ,” she emphasizes, “I meant for the other stuff. Like having fun and playing tag at recess and laughing so hard that I can’t breathe.”

“Oh,” says Jake dumbly.

“Yeah,” she mutters.

“Even if we aren’t in the same class we’ll still be best friends and see each other every day,” Jake finally says.

Amy sighs again, and her cinnamon breath fills his senses again. “I know, but it won’t be the same.”

“Yeah I know,” Jake admits, before he brightens. “Well we could protest it by not going to school at all,” Jake suggests. He glances over at Amy in the semi-darkness to see her nose crinkled. “Or we could not,” he amends,

“It’d just suck,” Amy says.

“Well I think we’ll be in the same class again,” Jake declares.

“Really?” He can hear the edge of doubt in Amy’s voice around her yawn.

“Of course,” Jake says confidently, “I refuse to be apart from my best friend and I’ll fight the principal or whoever I have to so we’re in the same class.”

“I’d do the same for you,” Amy admits sleepily, and then her tiny snores fill the tent.

Jake grins and pulls his blankets closer to his chin. “Goodnight, Ames,” he murmurs, and then he’s asleep too.

(They do have almost every class together, or at least every non-options course, and Jake doesn’t have to fight any principals for it. Amy even convinces Jake to join band in grade six, and while he’s terrible at woodwinds and brass, he has a knack for percussion that makes him actually enjoy band class and feel like he’s doing well; he especially likes band because the french horn section sits right in front of the xylophone so he can poke Amy in the back with his mallets while their band teacher isn’t looking. Jake knows, even back in middle school, that it won’t always be like this with Amy, easy and happy and together, because all his teachers warn them that most people don’t stay continue to be friends after middle school and especially after high school. But all Jake knows is that he refuses to let something stupid like drifting apart come between him and Amy. And even if the thought of Amy getting married and moving away makes his heart race a little, Jake just _knows_ that she’ll always be his best friend no matter what else happens in their lives.)

(Little does eleven year old Jake know, but it _will_ always be like that, easy and happy and together. And even though Amy does get married and move away from their houses, it’s perfectly alright with Jake since he’s the one who gets to wait for her at the end of the aisle.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will probably take a little longer because I keep getting ideas for high school and not middle school because middle school was hell tbh.


	4. school is a mess (but at least you’ve got us)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grade 6
> 
> Since we now know Amy’s mom’s name I went back and changed it lol.
> 
> Also the next update should definitely be with in a couple days since it only needs one more part and an edit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you didn't see the update on the last chapter, I’ve been dealing with a pretty serious family emergency about a tumour in my sister’s tibia, but like two weeks ago we found out it wasn’t cancer (still don’t know what it is though), and so with that off my mind my focus and motivation for writing (and school and life in general) finally came back from war. It was a rough couple months, and sorry for the unintentional hiatus, but I think I’m finally back on track again.

 

The Vulture should be going into ninth grade when Gina, Jake, and Amy enter sixth grade, except he gets held back and has to take grade eight again. Somehow, he’s even more terrible in middle school than he was in elementary school. 

“Hey turds.”

Gina sighs beside Jake and briefly looks up from filing her nails to eye the Vulture with a thoroughly unimpressed and bored look. “It’s barely the first day of school and I’m already too tired to deal with you.”

Amy makes a noise of agreement from Jake’s other side, her backpack hanging off one shoulder as she pulls it around to her hip to dig through and find her morning granola bar. “Way too tired.”

The Vulture sneers at them. “You’re all fresh meat this year, and middle school teachers care a lot less than the teachers from your baby school.”

“You went to that baby school,” Gina retorts.

“Well I’m at the top of the school here.”

“Aren’t you repeating eighth grade?” Jake asks.

“Sh— Shut up, turd!”

“Wow, creative,” Gina says, examining her nails.

“That’s probably why he failed,” Amy agrees absently, finally finding her granola bar and pulling it out.

“Oh most definitely,” Jake says as he reaches over and zips up her backpack while she opens the granola bar, splitting it in half and handing Jake one side.

“At least my daddy didn’t leave me for some flight attendant,” the Vulture spits, regaining his sneer.

Right at that moment everything goes very, very still around them. The scratch of Gina’s nail file halts, the sound cutting off abruptly, like the swell of music in an action movie dies when the hero starts to falter. Jake stares really hard at a point just past the Vulture’s head and ignores the clenching just below his sternum, like someone had reached inside his chest and started to squeeze. The half-chewed granola bar in his mouth suddenly tastes a lot like ash, or like he took too deep a breath around Amy’s abuelo while he was smoking those nasty smelling Cuban cigars.

“What did you just say?” Amy asks, and her voice is quiet, but not in the way it is when they’re pretending they’re asleep at a sleepover so their parents won’t hear. Her voice is quiet in a way Jake has never heard before, sharp and even and, just a little bit, dangerous.

The Vulture hesitates for a moment, his smarmy gaze jittering between Gina and Amy. “I said,” he raises his voice, and a couple other kids look over, staring unabashedly at the confrontation, “that at least my daddy didn’t leave me for some flight attendant.”

Jake knows what’s about to happen the split second before it does. It’s the change in the air, or the squeak of Gina’s sneaker against the ground, or the crinkling from the granola bar wrapper as Amy’s fingers tighten around it; Jake’s not quite sure what it is exactly, but he can feel it. 

And then everything starts moving again and it all seems to happen at once. The Vulture takes a step forward, his too wide chin jutting towards them. There’s movement around the edges of the hallway and Rosa and Charles push through the crowd, Rosa’s eyes dark and tight and Charles’ face pinched in worry. Amy’s fingers settle on his shoulder and her ponytail swings around to brush her neck as she steps closer to Jake, partially shielding him from the Vulture. 

But it’s not any of these moments that Jake reacts to, instead he lunges forward to grab Gina around the waist as she hurls herself at the Vulture. “Gina, no!” Jake shouts because, while it would be just their luck, he’d rather Gina not get suspended on the first day of middle school.

The Vulture falters back another step, his sneer wavering in the full force of all the Linetti rage clawing at the air in an attempt to reach him. Amy’s hand slip from his shoulder and she scampers around to his other side and grabs Gina over and around the shoulder and chest, digging her heels in and pulling back like she does to Fico when he tries to throw himself at one of the twins for their teasing. Gina’s spitting mad, snarling at the Vulture, and struggling to escape from the vice grips Jake and Amy have around her.

Jake senses movement at his side, and then Charles is there, hovering nervously beside the struggling trio and staring wide-eyed around the hallway, and then Rosa is there too, towering over most of the other kids, not in height or anything, just in pure fear-inducing presence. “Scram,” she snarls at the hallway, and kids scatter in different directions. The Vulture remains where he is, struggling to maintain his sneer.

Rosa steps around them and moves to stand in front, putting herself between the Vulture and their friends, and Gina finally deflates in Jake and Amy’s arms, going deadweight against them, but maintaining her glare. “Fuck off, Pembroke,” Rosa snarls and, considering everything, no one bats an eye at her cursing someone out in the middle of the hallway before 8:30 on the first day of school

“Make me, Diaz,” the Vulture sneers.

Rosa takes a menacing step towards him, and the violent way his body flinches away from her, still standing about eight feet away and incapable of actually reaching him from where she is, is more than a little satisfying. She turns away from him and adjusts her leather jacket, a gift from her papa for her twelfth birthday that she has wore ever since, and jerks her head down the hallway before leading the way.

Charles spins on his heels and practically skips after her. “That was amazing, Rosa,” he beams.

Rosa cracks a slight smile and nods at him, elbowing him gently in the side with a snort. “It was nothing,” she says easily, but Jake can tell she’s secretly thrilled at the compliment. 

Gina is still glowering at the Vulture, but doesn’t seem in danger of leaping for him again, so Jake and Amy hesitantly release her, before turning to follow Rosa and Charles down the hall.

“Stay foxy,” the Vulture finally manages to leer at their retreating backs, his voice still a little shaky.

“Die lonely,” Amy responds over her shoulder without missing a beat. Jake beams at the Vulture over Amy and Gina’s heads, waggling his fingers obnoxiously at him as they walk down the hallway to their first period class.

(And, okay, so maybe the Vulture’s taunts bother Jake a little more than he’d like to admit, and maybe when he lays in bed that night he can hear the Vulture’s voice echoing around his empty head, and maybe when he wakes sobbing from a nightmare that night he clings to his mom a little more than what’s cool for a middle schooler, and maybe he’s a little confused the next day when the glares Gina and Amy send the Vulture make him turn pale and flee back down the hall, and maybe his heart swells a little when Amy gives him half her granola bar without even asking and Gina continues to lazily file her nails beside them and gossip.)

(You know, maybe.)

 

* * *

 

December 12th is the day of their first band concert, and Jake won’t admit it, but the way Amy is pacing is making even him nervous.

“You’ll be fine,” Jake soothes, eyes tracing Amy’s fidgeting body; four steps right, a pause, a spin, four steps left, a spin, and repeat.

Amy’s playing with her hands, adjusting the buttons on her white dress shirt, tugging at the ends of her gently curled hair. “I’m going to completely mess this up and then everyone will hate me,” she mumbles; a spin, four steps right. 

Jake stands from Amy’s bed and interrupts her pacing. “You’ll be fine,” he repeats, easily and confidently, reaching up to tug on the white ball on the end of her lopsided Santa hat. 

She swats at his hand and scowls at him, readjusting the hat so it sits perfectly over her dark hair once again. Then her face falls back into her nervous, pinched look and she gazes up at Jake, tipping her chin up only slightly to meet his eyes, her own dark ones darting back and forth between Jake’s, searching for something. “How do you know?” she asks, except her voice goes all high and flighty.

Jake grins easily, placing his hands on her shoulders to steady her fidgeting. “Because I believe in you.” Amy swallows and manages a tiny, relieved smile. “And because you’ve been practicing that solo so much that your mamá came over to have coffee with my mom just to escape it last week,” he teases.

Jake can feel the tension ease out of Amy’s shoulders as she partially deflates against him. “How do you do that?” she mumbles into his shoulder, arms sliding around to his back.

Jake frowns, huffing out a breath to try and blow the dark strand of hair that’s landed in his mouth, wrapping Amy into a hug. “Do what?”

“Calm me down like that,” Amy’s voice is squished and muffled by his shoulder, but it still makes Jake’s heart pound in his ears.

He shrugs like it’s not big deal, even though he feels like it kind of is. “I guess I just know you really well.”

“Yeah,” Amy agrees. They stay wrapped up like that, just breathing quietly together in the warm yellow-brown light of the lamp on Amy’s bedside table, until they hear the deep voice of Amy’s papá calling for them from the living room.

Amy squeezes tight around Jake one last time before extracting herself from the embrace and scrunching up her nose as she gazes up at him.

“What?” Jake asks, rubbing a hand over his face, wondering if he has more spaghetti from supper smudged somewhere.

Amy pulls her glasses off her face and squints up at him, before turning to find her cleaning cloth on her bedside table. “Your shoulder smudged my glasses really bad.”

Jake grins playfully at her. “Maybe your glasses smudged my shoulder.”

Amy laughs as she cleans her glasses. “That makes no sense,” she protests, folding the cleaning cloth back up and setting it on the bedside table before leaning over too switch the lamp off, casting the room in partial darkness as the light from the hallway stretches across the doorway.

“You make no sense.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“ _You_ are ridiculous.”

“Oh my God, stop it.”

Jake laughs and turns to gesture out the door with a dramatic bow. “After you, m’lady.”

Amy giggles as she passes him, pushing his face away. “You’re a dork,” she says.

Jake waggles his eyebrows as he follows her down the hallway and towards the stairs. “Your dork,” he says easily, ignoring the flush that threatens to spread up his neck and into his cheeks.

Amy’s face softens, her cheeks dimpling and her eyes squishing together. “Yeah,” she agrees softly, and then Fico and Herbie are pushing between them and racing each other down the hallway, Jake and Amy on their heels to try and slow the two boys down before they topple each other down the stairs again.

(Amy _kills_ her solo, just like Jake knew she would, and he can’t even be embarrassed at the look she gives him, soft and shining, when he explodes into applause with the audience of proud parents and bored older siblings and crying infants, jumping and dancing around behind the xylophone. His best friend is brilliant, okay? And he doesn’t care about any of the weird looks his cheers draws from the other percussionists or the chastising look their band teacher sends him because he’s too busy being proud and beaming at the back of Amy’s head as she takes a small bow.)

 

* * *

 

Three weeks before the end of sixth grade they get a new principal. Her name is Ms. Wuntch and Jake swears she’s the devil incarnate, and also a secret agent.

“I swear it’s true,” Jake insists.

Charles frowns at him. “I dunno, Jakey. I’m as scared of her as the next guy, but it does seems a little far fetched, even for her.”

“And kind of crazy,” Amy adds from Charles’ side. She’s bent over her history homework, homework that was only assigned the period before, and absently chewing on some carrots. She glances up when Jake makes a noise of protest and gives him a sympathetic smile. “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” she soothes, “It’s just that it seems really weird.”

Jake shrugs in frustration and glances up at Rosa and Gina, standing in the lunch line and trying to inch as far away from Milton Boyle as they can manage. Gina’s face is twisted in discomfort (she had confessed last summer that she regretted even holding hands with Milton, let alone kissing him, in fifth grade), and Rosa’s face is stony and cold, even for her, as she glares at Milton.

Jake shakes his head and turns back to his peanut butter sandwich with a pout. “I know what I saw,” he says, not even caring that he sounds whiney as hell.

Amy taps the pink eraser of her pencil against her lips. “Maybe we could catch her instead.”

Jake perks up and Charles eyes them doubtfully, pausing in pulling apart his food, which was of the variety of _I’d-rather-not-know_ , in his hands. “What do you mean?” Charles asks warily.

Amy shrugs a little, shuffling her papers so they’re all perfectly lined up like she does when she’s nervous. “Well, I believe Jake, even if it’s kind of hard insane, but if we caught her doing it we’d know why she replaced Mr. Miller with only a couple weeks left of school.”

Jake slaps his hands on the table, rattling his chocolate milk, before pointing a finger at Amy. “See! You’re suspicious too.”

Amy rolls her eyes and bats his hand out of her face. “All I’m saying is it’s odd. And if what Jake says is true then we’ve got bigger problems to worry about.”

Jake and Charles both still, glancing at each other nervously. “Charles you shouldn’t get involved.”

“What?” he shrieks at the same time Amy voices her agreement.

“It’s too risky, buddy,” Jake quickly continues. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

Charles opens his mouth to protest, glancing between his two friends, before his shoulders droop. “You’re right,” he says, and he sounds so sad about it that Jake hurriedly searches for something to make him feel better.

“You could make us a snack!” Jake exclaims, ignoring Amy’s wide-eyed look of terror and continuing and the kick she sends at his ankle, hoping he doesn’t sound as doubtful as he feels, “A really good snack for when Amy and I catch her and—”

Charles interrupts him with a whoop loud enough for the surrounding tables to glance around and glare. Amy reaches for Charles’ elbow and harshly pulls him back down, the tips of her ears pink from everyone staring at them. “You won’t regret this,” Charles starts, and Jake kind of zones out as he rambles about food Jake would rather not know about, let alone consume, and when he refocuses his attention back to the present Amy’s head is buried in her homework and Charles is nowhere to be seen.

“We’re going to die,” Amy moans into her notebook. Jake’s not sure whether she means if Ms. Wuntch catches them, or if they survive her only to eat whatever Charles decides to cook up for them and, honestly, he’s too scared to ask her to clarify.

“We should make a plan,” Jake says instead.

Amy makes a noise of agreement into the papers under her head, and when she sits back up there’s ink smudged along her cheek. Jake thinks it’s cute, and as soon as the thought crosses his mind he shakes his head and tries to ignore the burning under his skin as they lean forward to start scheming.

Their plan involves much more waiting around and much less action than Jake prefers, but it’s the only one that’s the least likely to get them in trouble.

“We need a code name for her,” Jake decides, “In case someone overhears us talking about her. I know you don’t want detention on your record.”

Amy smiles at him in gratitude and turns around, eyeing the hallway around the corner for any signs of teachers wandering down the hall. Other kids mull around them, packing up backpacks and slamming lockers as they race to catch buses or loiter around to gossip. “The Devil?” she suggests.

Jake’s nose wrinkles. “Too obvious.”

“Lunchmeat.”

Jake barks out a surprised laugh, recognizing Amy’s mischievous smirk. “You really wanna go with that one?”

“It’s brilliant.”

“Sure it is.”

“Think you can come up with something better?” she teases.

Jake grins and puffs up his chest. “Obviously,” he gloats, and then nothing comes to his brain for a long moment. “What about the Goat?” he finally asks.

Amy giggles and glances back at him. “Why Goat?”

“Goats and the Devil are both hooved.”

“Hoofed?”

“Yeah, that.”

“I like it,” she agrees with a grin.

“Sweet!” Jake cheers, pumping a fist in the air before Amy spins around and presses him back to the lockers, stilling his celebrating fist. 

“The teachers are leaving the office now and Wuntch is leading them. Rosa’s distraction must have worked,” she whispers into his ear.

Jake starts to nod, but is suddenly over-aware of how close Amy is, and how if he moves his head he will definitely knock his face into hers. “Okay,” he whispers instead.

Amy bites her lip and stares at him for a long time. “Are you sure this will work? I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

Jake shrugs, and the shrill whistle down the hallway lets them know the coast is clear. “I’ll be fine,” he assures, and tries to ignore the pleasant twist in his stomach at her concern. “Go on, I’ll meet you outside.”

Amy chews on her lip for a little longer before surging forward and pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. “Be safe,” she whispers urgently, and then she’s gone down the hall.

Jake completes the entire next part of his mission with a blush firmly plastered across his cheeks. The office is mostly empty, save for one secretary at the front desk, talking to Gina and looking more and more bewildered as the conversation goes on. Gina gives Jake a thumbs up below the counter where the secretary can’t see, and Jake crouches down before shuffling forward into the office, thankful that Gina speaks a little louder to cover the sounds of his sneakers on the floor.

He sneaks around and behind Gina, who holds the secretary’s attention, chatting about birdwatching of all things. Jake manages to make it past the corner of the desk and safely into the hallway without the secretary noticing and without laughing out loud when Gina asks, her voice both bored and interested, “Is that the one that sounds like Beyónce?”

Jake creeps along the hallway, looking for Wuntch’s office, pausing outside J-13 and wondering what he’s going to do if the door is locked. He jiggles the doorknob and is more than a little surprised when the door swings open easily. He stands there in shock for a moment before hurrying into the office and around to the window behind Wuntch’s desk. He cracks it open a little and waits for a moment.

“Jake?” Amy hisses below him, causing him to jump.

“Amy? Wow, I can’t see you at all,” Jake whispers, leaning against the window and trying to spot Amy’s dark head from where she sits underneath it. 

“Good, now hurry up. Rosa’s distraction won’t last for long before she needs to run so they won’t catch her.” 

“Got it,” Jake whispers, creeping back across the room and gently shutting the door behind him.

When he sneaks back out and around the desk, crouching so much his thighs start to ache, it’s to the sounds of Gina imitating birds chirps and the secretary trying to guess what birds she’s imitating which, since he knows Gina as well as he does, are none. 

Once he makes it back out of the main office, he straightens and shoots Gina a thumbs up. Gina reaches across the desk and cups the secretary’s chin, shaking his head back and forth and thanking him in that high pitched false tone she does when she’s lying.

Gina skips out of the office, pausing beside Jake for a high five, before continuing down the hall to her locker. Jake heads to the front doors, trying to keep his pounding heart under control as he passes Wuntch heading back for her office. He pushes open the doors and creeps along the school, hugging the brick wall, until he spots Amy’s dark head of hair curled up tightly below a window. Amy smiles up at him but holds a finger to her lips before pointing up at the window above her. Jake nods silently and sinks down into the grass, crawling the last couple of feet to her and folding himself up beside her, hips and shoulders and knees knocking against each other.

Wuntch’s voice is muffled, but still understandable, as she speaks. Jake assumes she must be on the phone because they can only her her cackling voice.

“Well, Mr. Superintendent, I’m not the one who hired a drug addict as the principal of a middle school.” 

Jake and Amy look at each other with wide eyes.

“Yes, Miller’s arrest has been kept quiet, but if it gets out I won’t fight it.”

Jake freezes and Amy’s fingers wrap around his wrist, squeezing tightly as they stare at each other.

Wuntch’s voice goes sharp and tense for a moment, almost whiplike in her words. “I am a NYC Detective, Mr. Superintendent, and my concern lies with the citizens of this city and their children, not with your public image nor with what Giggle Pig has done to your former principal.”

Jake swallows and tugs on Amy’s hand, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, and Amy nods frantically, following him as they crawl away from the window. It goes well, until Jake’s sneaker brushes against a twig and snaps it with deafening loudness. Jake and Amy freeze and stare at one another, before Jake’s gaze drifts to Wuntch’s window, catching on cold brown eyes as she glares out the window at them.

Jake snaps into action at the cold rage burning there, grabbing Amy’s hand and tugging her out of her paralysis until they’re both sprinting for the bike rack around the side of the school, stumbling and frenzied as they buckle helmets on and undo bike locks, before they hop on the bikes and peddle furiously for Charles and Gina’s house, grateful that Charles had taken their backpacks home with him before they started their mission.

They’re a little less than grateful to Charles once he sets plates of who-knows-what down in front of them with a dramatic flourish.

(Jake’s biggest regret of middle school, besides the fact that it’s _middle school_ , is making an enemy of Ms. Wuntch and eating whatever the hell Charles made them.)

(Jake’s biggest accomplishment of middle school, besides the fact that he survived _middle school_ , is making an enemy of Ms. Wuntch and eating whatever the hell Charles made them.)

 

* * *

 

On their twelfth birthday their parents let them camp out in Amy’s backyard again, and her papá once again helps them pitch the tent by sitting on the ground, stretching his legs out, leaning back on his hands, and instructing them with an amused grin.

Jake and Amy are grinning at each other as they survey their finished work. The tent’s still a little lopsided on the left side like last year, but Jake and Amy just jump around in pride. Amy’s papá laughs at them and stands with a groan, giving them both a birthday hug and a stern warning to not stay up too late that Jake and Amy both know they will conveniently ‘forget’ in two seconds.

They stay outside for a while, staring up at the fireflies hovering in the air and counting constellations before Jake rolls his head towards his best friend.

“Mom’s sick again,” Jake admits quietly.

Amy rolls onto her side and brushes her hand against his. “Again?” she asks. “I’m so sorry Jake.”

Jake nods and then turns his head to look back up at the stars. “She’s been working too hard again and not getting enough sleep,” he murmurs. “I’m worried about her.”

Amy hums and looks a little lost as she searches for something to say. “I’m sorry,” she settles on again, but the earnestness in her voice is what makes Jake know she’s not just repeating herself. Her fingers curl into his hand and Jake lets out a shaky breath.

“She won’t say anything but I know we’ve been struggling since dad left,” he admits quietly. Amy sighs and her cinnamon breath fans across his face as she scoots closer, wrapping Jake in a slightly awkwardly executed half-hug, her hand remaining clasped in his. “He hasn’t paid any of his child support or whatever,” Jake mutters, feeling something choke the words as they come out so his voice sounds all raspy and crackly. “I dunno. I heard nana and mom talking about money a while ago,” he pauses to look back at Amy, searching her dark eyes, “It didn’t sound good,” he finally says.

Amy squeezes his hand, her eyebrows drawn low and upturned over her face in worry. “I’m sorry,” she says again. Jake nods and kind of half shrugs, breaking eye contact and staring past Amy’s ear instead. “Do you want to talk about it more?”

Jake shrugs again and shakes his head a little. “Not really.”

Amy hesitates for a moment, but takes a deep breath. “Maybe you should talk to your mom about it.”

Jake shakes his head frantically. “No way.”

“Jake—”

“No, I— I can’t. I know it sounds awful but I just can’t. I can’t know for sure.”

Amy’s quiet for a long moment before he feels her shift beside him. “Is there anything I can do?"

Jake sighs. “Not really. Unless you’ve got enough money for me to buy mom a house somewhere warm.”

“She deserves something nice,” Amy agrees.

“I’d give her anything to make her smile again. She’s always so sad.” Jake doesn’t say _since dad left_ because he doesn’t have to, Amy already knows what he means.

“You’re a good son, Jake,” Amy says.

Jake frowns and glances at Amy’s face again, seeing the open look on her face and the certainty in her eyes makes his stomach flip. He _should_ just thank her and leave it at that, he _wants_ to just leave it at that, but something dark forces its way out of his chest, rattling his ribs and running his words together angrily. “No I’m not,” he argues, turning so he can glare up at the stars, “I don’t get good grades and I get in trouble for not paying attention at school and I have detention most afternoons and I disappoint my mom, like, all the time, and—”

Amy’s grip is so tight it starts to crush the bones in his hands as she glares at him fiercely. “ _You_. _Are. A. Good. Son_ ,” she hisses, enunciating each word carefully and sharply, tugging on his wrist in time with her sentence. “You are always trying to make her laugh and you care about your friends and you make cookies for the neighbours whenever your nana is over and you helped that kitten out of a tree last week and didn’t even say anything when it scratched your arms all up—”

“But—”

“And what about that time you cleaned the house without asking so your mom wouldn’t come home a mess after work. Or that time you made her breakfast all by yourself last month just because. Or that time you picked flowers out of Mrs. Pontes’ garden to give her after you found her stressing out over bills. Or that time you made her a lunch and walked all the way to the elementary school to give it to her because she forgot—”

“But—”

“No ‘buts’. You’re a good son, Jake. I promise. I wouldn’t lie to you, would I?”

Jake hesitates and that dark thing crawls back into his chest when he meets Amy’s eyes. “No, I guess not,” he mumbles.

“Good,” Amy says, and then turns back to the stars, pointing out constellations and telling him the stories behind each one, her grip on his hand never loosening.

Jake stares at her for a long moment before squeezing her hand in his. “Thank you, Ames,” he whispers.

Amy looks over at him, her eyes nearly bottomless in the dusk of the sliver of sun fighting its descent behind the horizon, painting the backyard in purple darkness. She smiles at him softly. “No problem, Jake.”

(The next morning Jake wakes up before Amy and sneaks out of the tent, creeping across the yard and plucking some roses off the bushes separating Amy’s yard from his, mindful of the thorns, and gathering them into a hasty bouquet, before jogging to his yard and easing open the back door. His mom is sitting at the table, steam curling and dancing above cup of coffee, bills spread across the table, fingers pressed into her temples. She looks up when he walks into the dining room, smiling tiredly but genuinely at him, and gasping in surprise as he thrusts the bouquet of roses under her nose.

“What are these for?”

Jake shrugs and scuffs his toe against the ground as she takes them reverently, fiddling with his hands behind his back. “Thanks for giving birth to me, or whatever. I’m really glad I got the best mom for myself.”

When his mom doesn’t say anything he looks up at her in worry, only to find her staring at him, a hand covering her mouth as she looks at him through watery, beaming eyes. “Jake,” she murmurs, “I love you so much more than you’ll ever know.”

Jake smiles shyly at her and steps into the circle of her arms. “I love you too, mom.”

He’s back in the tent and his sleeping bag before Amy is awake, and she stirs sleepily as he zips his bag back up. “Jake? Where were you?”

“I had something to do. Go back to sleep, Ames, it’s still early.”

Amy mumbles something incoherent and turns towards him, her arm flapping out of her pile of blankets and landing on his stomach, not moving it as she falls back asleep.

Jake thinks of Amy’s conviction last night as she whispered fiercely at him, and of his mom’s teary eyed joy at the messy bouquet of flowers he gave her, and of the way his mom always lights up when she sees him even if she’s bone tired and half asleep on the couch, and he thinks that maybe, _maybe_ , Amy is right, maybe he is a good son after all.)

(Of course, Amy’s always right.)


	5. we're drowning (but at least it's better than middle school)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grade 7 — Grade 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: I, uh, know like nothing about Bar Mitzvahs and trusted the Chabad organization website for the ceremony and party, and my research was pretty sparse because I have a butt-ton of midterms and assignments due, but I love learning about other cultures (anthro major lmao) so if I got anything wrong please let me know!
> 
> And thanks for all the support and understanding for my whole family emergency. I truly appreciate it so much more than you could know!
> 
> Edit Feb 12: After some awesome info in a lovely comment from Andromeda I switched a little bit of stuff around in the bar mitzvah ceremony (since I've never been to one and know next to nothing about them, the info was so appreciated). It's not much of a change, just some minor alterations to sitting arrangements and where the speech fits in.

The first day of grade seven results in Amy standing in the doorway of Jake’s bedroom, dressed in a tiny button up, holding Jake’s Spiderman lunchbox, her own backpack heavy with books and foot tapping an impatient rhythm as she waits for Jake.

For his part, Jake is hopping around in his room, desperately trying to pull on his socks and brush his teeth at the same time.

Amy just sighs. “Must we do this every year.”

“Opf courth, sweeth-arth,” Jake mumbles around his toothbrush, the words coming out all squished.

“Uhh, _what_?”

Jake hops past Amy and out into the hallway, stumbling in the bathroom and spitting out his mouthful of toothpaste. “Of course, sweetheart,” Jake repeats, fluttering his eyelashes and practically swooning.

Amy rolls her eyes and pushes his face away from where it’s almost pressed to her cheek. “Well hurry, _darling_ , or else we’re going to be late and I’ll get arrested for murder.”

Jake just grins at her, having long learned that Amy didn’t mean half the things she threatened him with, before finally pulling his socks fully up his ankles.

“You know you love it.”

“ _Ugh._ ”

Jake’s mom’s voice floats up from the kitchen, somehow both gentle and reprimanding, “Jake! Amy! Hurry up or you’ll miss the bus.”

“Jake I swear to God if we miss—”

“We’ll be fine,” Jake consoles Amy, before shouting down the stairs to his mom, “We’ll be fine!”

“Jake,” Amy says warningly, jabbing Jake in the shoulder as he hops past her, tying his shoe (poorly) as he balances (poorly) on one foot. 

“Amy,” Jake mimics mockingly, but his fond grin softens the tone in his voice.

Amy rolls her eyes and crouches beside Jake’s backpack, shoving his lunchbox in the bag, easily avoiding wrinkling the notebooks and Duo-Tangs and graph paper (which Amy had packed for him last night, because Jake is hopeless at proper packing techniques; Amy’s words, not his). “If we’re late for out first day of grade seven I’m going to kill you,” she warns mildly as she zips his backpack up.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jake says compliantly, “You said that already.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“Come on, kids!”

(They don’t miss the bus, because Amy would never be late to anything and Jake’s pretty sure the only reason she doesn’t straight up murder him for running behind is because the bus itself is seventy-two seconds late, something that he listens to Amy complain about the entire fifteen minute ride to school. Though, with Amy squished against his side and the chilly autumn air rushing through the open window two seats in front of him and half a granola bar in his hand, Jake finds he doesn’t mind listening to Amy’s complaints about punctuality so much.)

 

* * *

 

Jake watches _Die Hard_ for the first time in grade seven, a week and a half before Christmas break. His mom is at work and his nana is visiting friends in New Jersey for the weekend, which means he’s staying over at the Santiago Álvarez’s for the night. Ed is already in grade eleven and, even though he’s probably the coolest older kid Jake knows, he still makes time to spend with his younger siblings and Jake. Even when he would probably be having more fun if he was spending time with his girlfriend instead.

Ed and Amy are in the kitchen making popcorn for their movie night, which means Jake and the twins are downstairs picking out a movie. And since Ed and Amy, the two goody-two-shoes who would tattle for choosing an inappropriate movie, are an entire floor above them, Jake and Luís and Andrés hurry to sort through their papá’s movie collection before the tattletales get there.

“If we choose really fast and start the movie before they get here we’ll already be into it before they can say no,” Jake says urgently, glancing at the stairs for any sign of Ed or Amy.

“Hurry up,” Luís hisses.

“There’s just so many,” Andrés whines. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Then let me, dummy,” Luís finally says, pushing his brother out of the way. 

Jake can hear footsteps above them, and the basement door creaks open, the sounds of Ed and Amy floating down the stairs. Andrés turns to Jake with a wide-eyed look and nods towards the stairs. Jake nods quickly before leaping over the back of the couch and practically sprinting to the stairs. “Hey,” he says, drawing the word out and making Ed and Amy freeze halfway down the stairs, eyeing him suspiciously. “I, um, thought I’d come and get the popcorn bowls and, uh, you could go back and get water for everyone.”

“Jake,” Amy says in warning.

Jake ignores her and bounds up the stairs, two at a time, gently extracting the bowls from Amy’s hands. “We don’t want us to, uh, get dehydrated while watching the movie or anything.”

“What movie are we watching?” Ed asks, and Jake can tell that he’s onto them.

“I don’t know,” Jake answers honestly. “We haven’t picked it yet.”

Ed nods slowly, before sighing and piling his bowls onto the ones already in Jake’s hands, grumbling as he trudges back up the stairs. Amy hesitates for a moment, caught between helping her brother and questioning her best friend, before shrugging at Jake and following Ed back up the stairs. Jake breathes a sigh of relief and carefully walks back down the stairs, mindful of the bowls in his hands.

Luís and Andrés are giggling at each other, sliding a VHS tape into the machine. “What’d movie did you choose?” Jake asks around the towering pile of popcorn bowls, muttering his thanks when Luís takes the stacked bowls off his hands and sets them on the table. 

“It’s a secret,” he says with a wink.

“But—”

“Eh, eh, eh,” Andrés tuts, shoving a handful of popcorn in his mouth. “Plausible deniability and all that.”

Jake shrugs and takes a bowl of popcorn, flopping down on the love-seat set perpendicular to the couch, angled slightly towards the television. “I’ll find out soon enough,” he concedes easily. Luís fast-forwards through the previews and 20th Century Fox title screen, pausing the movie once a plane fills the screen against the backdrop of an orange sunset. 

The basement door opens again and Ed and Amy trudge back down the stairs without interruption, holding five bottles of water between them. Ed takes a bowl of popcorn and settles against the end of the couch, already pulling his phone out and scrolling through it lazily. Luís and Andrés flop on the couch beside him, but Jake knows that one of them will end up sprawled out on the floor sometime before the first act of the movie ends. Amy hands Jake a bottle and settles beside him while Jake balances the popcorn between their legs. 

“Who’s going to hit play?” Ed asks, before instantly touching his forefinger to his nose.

Everyone rushes to shove their fingers in their own faces and Amy, with her usual whine about the nose game being a dumb way to decide anything (mostly because she loses every time), reluctantly stands and moves to press play on the machine before tossing the television remote to Andrés, shrugging unapologetically when it smacks him in the shoulder, and moving to turn out the lights. She’s settling back beside Jake as the interior of the airplane is filling the screen, which is about the time Ed finally looks up at the screen and frowns suspiciously, trying to recognize the movie.

When the _Die Hard_ logo flies across the screen Ed whips his head to glare at the twins, who just giggle and throw more popcorn into their mouths.

“This movie is so inappropriate for Jake and Amy,” Ed says in warning. “They’re like twelve.”

Luís shrugs and answers before Jake or Amy can complain, “It’s basically _Home Alone_.”

“Except for adults,” Andrés adds.

Ed groans and buries his face in his hands. “I’m in so much trouble for this,” he mumbles, but makes no move to stop the movie.

(If anything, Jake totally blames his obsession with _Die Hard_ on the twins, thought they’re often to blame for most things. The way his face flushed and his palms got a little sweaty when Amy dozed off against his shoulder during the climax of the movie though? Totally his heart’s fault.)

 

* * *

 

The summer that Jake and Amy turn thirteen is when Jake starts to think he has a crush on Jenny Gildenhorn because she’s pretty and smart and laughs at his dumb jokes.

(He ignores the fact that Amy is pretty and smart and laughs at his dumb jokes because she’s been spending time with Luís’ friend _Luke Mueller_ and laughing at _his_ jokes and his hair lies flawlessly flat and his nose-to-face ratio is perfect and he has dreamy blue eyes and he’s fifteen and is also perhaps the prettiest boy Jake has ever seen. 

But the fact that whenever he goes over to Amy’s house she finds her laughing with _Luke Mueller_ and unable to hang out has _nothing_ to do with him clinging to the attention Jenny Gildenhorn gives him when she laughs at his jokes. _Nothing_ to do with it. Nothing at all.)

(Years later he learns that Amy was actually just tutoring Luís and Luke on complex quadratic equations because they both almost failed grade nine math the year before and Jake and Amy start laughing and can’t stop thinking about how hopeless they were for each other, even back then.)

And so when Jenny agrees to come to his Bar Mitzvah with a kiss to his cheek Jake wonders if he’ll be able to pick himself up from where his bones melt into the floor.

Since Jake has his Bar Mitzvah, their parents decide that it will be easier to celebrate their birthdays separately this year, but still with each other. So they decide to celebrate just Jake’s birthday on the eighteenth for his Bar Mitzvah and celebrate Amy’s birthday on the day after at the Santiago Álvarez house with supper and cake. It’s separate but together that year, and Jake pretends that his chest doesn’t ache about celebrating their birthdays separately for the first time in seven years.

(Jake is so caught up in his Bar Mitzvah planning and his not-jealous-jealously of _Luke Mueller_ and his need to make Jenny Gildenhorn laugh that he doesn’t even notice that Amy aches about it too.)

This birthday plan was only after Jake’s mom was certain that Jake could have a Bar Mitzvah party. Three weeks ago his mom had cried when his nana had shoved a cheque into her hands, a ridiculously large amount of money she had been saving since Jake was born from his Bar Mitzvah and college fund. Jake had never in his life seen his mom look as relieved and grateful as she did when she turned to him with bright eyes and announced that she was about to throw him the best Bar Mitzvah party in the history of Bar Mitzvah parties. 

(Technically his Bar Mitzvah should have been back near the end of July, but his mom didn’t have the money to celebrate it then, and they still wouldn’t have been able to without the cheque from his nana, but Jake doesn’t really mind. He’s just grateful to see his mom so happy to be doing this. Technically they could have just done the Bar Mitzvah ceremony at the synagogue and skipped the party part and Jake wouldn’t have minded all that much, especially because it would have meant celebrating his birthday together with Amy like usual, but his mom seemed to retreat into herself when he told her this and she admitted she had been dreaming of his Bar Mitzvah since the day she first held him in her arms and, well, Jake can’t bring it in him to deny her that, so they waited.)

Before Jake even realizes it, it’s the morning of his Bar Mitzvah and his mom is overjoyed to be pinning his _kippah_ to his wild curls, and his nana is proudly wrapping his first _tallit_ around his shoulders, and Jake is reverently tracing the neatly woven blue thread along the edges. Jake’s nana takes pictures on her disposable camera, and Jake’s pretty sure he blinks in every picture, and the Jake’s mom is urging him towards the car and he’s at the synagogue.

The ceremony passes in a blur of colour and speeches and pride. A neighbour Jake’s known since before he could walk, and who acted as his teacher for the ceremony for the past half a year, binds the _tefillin_ for him, and Jake tries to ignore the gapping absence of his dad and his _zayde_ , who died when his mom was still pregnant with him, and the absence of his _nonna_ and _noppa_ , who were too embarrassed to come to his Bar Mitzvah because they spoke mostly Italian and were always more than a little awkward around his mom and him after their son abandoned her and Jake without a word.

Even surrounded by so many people in the crowd and most of the middle aged men at the synagogue up at the front with him, and with warm, calloused hands wrapping the _tefillin_ up his arms with a kind smile, and his mom and nana beaming proudly up at him, Jake feels suddenly and inescapably alone.

Before he knows it, he’s being pushed up the platform where the Torah sits, and then the book is open before him and he’s staring at words swimming around the page as he looks out into the crowd, surrounded by men he’s not related to. (Later, he barely remembers how he managed to stumble through the words floating around him, his tongue feeling clumsy as it wraps around words he only started trying to speak a couple months ago, but his mom and nana and his neighbour-mentor all smile proudly at him when he finishes, and that’s all that really matters to Jake.)

And then it’s time for his speech, one that Amy and him worked on every night for the past two weeks, and even though he knows the words inside out, and even though Amy’s neat writing fills the two pages in his hands, his fingers still tremble as he wraps holds the paper before him to read. He doesn’t say anything for long awkward moments as the crowd stares at him, waiting, family and friends and neighbours and some kids from school and members of the synagogue Jake’s known for forever, and Jake freezes, something stuck in his throat and aching in his chest as his eyes slide over the crowd once more for a man he knows won’t be there.

And then his eyes pass over where the Santiago Álvarezes are sitting, welcoming and warm and loud and loving, and where Amy sits beaming at him, squished between Rosa and Gina, with scrawny four year-old Manny perched on her knees, his wild curls tickling against Amy’s neck as he snuggles into her embrace. Gina sits beside Charles, her eyes glowing with affection and pride while Charles excitedly shoots him a thumbs up, his little sister kneeling on beside him so she can see Jake past heads in front of her. Auntie Darlene runs a hand through the little girl’s hair while she grins up at Jake, and Lynn Linetti-Boyle’s eyes shift between the arching windows and Jake, smiling up at him every time. Rosa’s hand is clasped in Pimento’s at the end of the row as she looks around, mock-bored and smirking encouragingly at Jake. 

Finally, Jake’s eyes land on his mom and nana near the front, both of them teary and beaming and glowing with pride and, with his eyes on his mom’s, Jake finds that his speech comes easy after that.

Hours later, tucked into the hotel dining room his nana had booked, Jake finds that he can barely remember any details of the ceremony, only the slight ache in his chest and the sting behind his eyes as he looked into the crowd, searching the faces for a man he knew wouldn’t be there. His mom pulls him to the front of the dining room and welcomes everyone, nudging Jake in the side with a gentle elbow and a warm smile and offering him the microphone for his own welcomes that he stumbles through with all the preteen awkwardness of a thirteen year old.

And then before he knows it, people are laughing and clapping for him and cheering as he turns to the side and falls into the embrace of his mom. The food is delicious, and the music is throbbing through his chest, and he stands to the side, waiting for Jenny Gildenhorn to catch his eyes so he can work up the courage to ask her to dance.

He jumps and shrieks, just a little when Amy taps him on the shoulder. She smirks at him as she hands him his present. Jake looks at her questioningly and Amy shrugs and drops her gaze. “You looked a little lost standing over here by yourself so I thought I’d let you open your gift.”

“Aw thanks, Ames. What is it?” Jake asks, poking through the bag. He doesn’t look up and so he misses the way Amy’s ears pink at his question.

“It’s, uh, just eighteen of my mamá’s cookies since, you know, eighteen is really important and everything. I helped her make them last night so they’re really fresh. Oh! And also eighteen boxes of Dots! ‘Cause I know they’re your favourite and all.”

“Awesome!” Jake cheers, reaching in a pulling a cookie out of a bag, chewing on it happily. “These are delicious, Ames. Thanks for an equally terrific and tasty present,” he says and pulls her into a bear hug.

Amy flushes with pride and something shy as she smiles at him when he pulls back. “Mamá did most of the cooking and Herbie ate enough cookie dough that he got sick and we had to make another batch.”

Jake laughs and offers Amy a bite, which she takes by delicately ripping off a piece of cookie and popping it in her mouth as they turn to watch their friends and neighbours and classmates dance. Jenny Gildenhorn’s blue dress sparkles in the lights and she catches his eye and smiles widely at him.

(Jake misses the way Amy’s face falls as he watches Jenny Gildenhorn.)

“I, uh, I should go,” Amy says, trailing off and swallowing thickly, gesturing somewhere behind her head.

Jake glances at her in confusion. “What? Why?"

“I promised my parents I’d keep an eye on Manny for them and I left him with Fico to watch while I gave you your present and I should go find them before I get in trouble, or at least before they get in trouble,” she rambles.

Jake frowns because Amy’s papá had taken Manny home with Herbie and Rafi so he could get the boys to bed on time. He knows this because Amy’s papá and the three boys had come to say goodbye and happy birthday to him about half an hour ago.

Jake frowns because Amy just lied to him and Jake doesn’t think she’s ever done that before. 

“Huh?” he manages.

“Yeah, you know, so I gotta go and find him,” she says, and then she’s turning from him and walking in quick, sharp steps to get away.

“Wait!” Jake calls stepping forward, staring at his best friend and wondering why the hell she’s acting so weird and why his chest feels all tight when she gives him a slightly pleading look over her shoulder. “Ames,” Jake says softly, his voice barely carrying over the music. She hesitates a step and half turns back to him, waiting. “Why did you—” Jake stops abruptly when Amy shoots that same pleading look. Something twists tighter in his stomach. “We, uh, we’re still sleeping in the tent tomorrow, right?” he asks desperately, changing his original question and wondering why she won’t look right at him, and why she’s fidgeting so much, and why she just lied to him. “After we have supper at your place tomorrow, we’re still having a sleepover in the tent, right?”

Amy’s eyes look everywhere but his. “Uh, it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.”

Jake’s frown deepens and his chest expands with a shaky breath. “So?”

Amy’s fingers beat against her thighs and Jake recognizes the buzzing anxiety clinging to her frame. “So it’ll be cold and wet.”

“But— But it’s our thing! It’s tradition,” he protests. Amy’s fingers tap faster against her thighs and she sifts her weight from one foot to the other, resolutely not meeting his eyes. “Ames?” Jake finally says when the silence stretches on too long, taking a small step closer to her again. He feels like he’s losing something he didn’t even know he had. “We’ll still have a regular sleepover at least, right? Even if it rains? We can just have a regular sleepover.”

Amy swallows and still doesn’t meet his eyes as she ducks her head and stares at the ground between their feet. “Yeah, sure,” she whispers finally, and relief sparks throughout Jake’s limbs even as something heavy settles in his stomach at her hesitance.

“Ames,” Jake murmurs, taking a step closer. Amy’s head shoots up and her eyes catch on his for a split second before flying away again. Jake’s not sure what he sees in their darkness, but it’s something he’s never seen before and it makes something thick and guilty balloon in his chest, aching and heavy. It’s something like pain flashing in Amy’s eyes as they dart over his shoulder, and Jake glances back but only sees Jenny Gildenhorn dancing with some of their classmates, her blue dress swirling around her knees. It’s nothing that would hold Amy’s attention, but when Jake looks back at Amy her face is carefully blank. “Ames?” he asks again, ignoring the slightly desperate crack to his voice.

And then all of a sudden something quick and bright and small brushes past him and grabs onto Amy’s hand with all the authority and power that only a Linetti can manage at just over five feet.

“C’mon, Amy, bathroom, now. Wardrobe emergency.”

Amy looks so relieved when Gina starts to pull her away that Jake can’t help the lightning-quick throb of hurt that arches through him. “Sorry, Jake,” Amy says with her mouth but her eyes scream something else at him, the deep darkness there cracked along the fault-lines Jake feels spreading in his chest. She turns and obediently follows Gina, and Jake catches the last half of their conversation before they’re swallowed up in the crowds, and it just makes him a little more confused and a little more hurt than he thought he could be.

“Your outfit looks fine, Gina.”

“I didn’t say I was the one with the wardrobe emergency.”

A beat of silence and then Amy’s protesting voice. “Hey!” Another long beat as Gina weaves around some of the men who helped Jake with his _tefillin._

Jake can’t hear what Amy says next because she’s still moving away and mumbling a little, but he does hear Gina’s genuine “No problem. I know what it feels like.”

Jake watches them until he can’t see them anymore and then turns back to stare at the dance floor.

The smile and wink Jenny Gildenhorn sends him when she catches sight of him a moment later ease his confusion and the ache in his chest and he _almost_ completely forgets about how weird Amy’s been tonight and how relieved she was when Gina’s fingers wrapped around her wrist and pulled her away and how pained Gina’s voice sounded as they disappeared into the crowd.

Jake waves awkwardly back at Jenny Gildenhorn and blushes when her smile widens.

(Jake spends most of the party waiting to dance with Jenny Gildenhorn and glaring at Eddie Fung when he takes her hand in his and doesn’t notice that Amy spends most of the party waiting for him.)

(Gina spends most of the party dancing with other people’s dates and frowning at the back of Jake’s head every time he walks past Amy while staring at Jenny Gildenhorn and eyeing the chair where Rosa perches on Pimento’s lap.)

(Rosa spends most of the party in a corner with Adrian and picking at the food Charles brings them, smirking at his attempts to woo Vivian, the twenty year-old daughter of one of Jake’s neighbours, and pretending she doesn’t see the heartsick looks on Gina and Amy’s faces.)

(Amy spends most of the party ignoring the fact that her heart seems to be falling into an abyss that’s cracked up in her chest every time Jake smiles his big-puppy-dog-smile at Jenny and keeping a worried and empathetic eye on Gina.)

(Amy spends the rest of the party sitting with Gina on the roof, reclining against the short wall on the edge and trading a can of soda between them, eating chocolate cake with their fingers and giggling at the other’s teasing, both pretending that they don’t feel a lonely ache in the empty space under their sternum where their heart should be.)

 

* * *

 

The winter of eighth grade, when they return to school after the new year, Jake finally works up the courage to tell Amy the secret he’s been carrying since before Christmas. He’s wanted to tell her since the moment he found out, since that moment on that last day of school before break when he got that awful phone call that had his mom going very still and very quiet and had him shaking in the middle of the living room, anger and fear and disgust cycling through his stomach like clothes fold in over one another in a dryer. He’s wanted to tell her since the moment his fingers brushed the phone cradle to answer the call, but he didn’t want to ruin her Christmas because Amy loves Christmas. And so he waits and watches Amy as her dark eyes turn from confused in the first couple days and then angry after the first week and then sad for the rest of break.

He knows that Amy knows he’s hiding something from her, and he knows that she’s more than a little bit hurt by it, but he can’t quite make him self feel bad about it because, well—

“Dad’s getting married.”

A hand flies to Amy’s mouth to try and cover the gasp this news elicits. “He— I mean— But— What?”

Jake wants to scowl or kick the side of his bed, but that will probably result in a little more pain than he really wants. That and he’s just really, really tired.

“When’d you find out?” Amy asks, and shock and nausea and hesitant outrage cling to her voice.

Jake shrugs and scuffs his socked toe along the carpet, waiting for a static shock to tickle his toes that never comes. He’s been feeling like that ever since he woke up Thanksgiving morning six years ago, like he’s always waiting for something that never comes. Jake supposes this is it, this is the thing he’s been waiting for, and it’s finally come like a building being demolished, one second it’s there and the next it’s crumbling to its foundations. “The last day of school,” Jake finally admits when Amy keeps waiting for his answer.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Amy asks, and Jake supposes she’s trying to sound accusatory but instead it just comes out quiet and sad and a little bit hurt.

“I didn’t want to ruin your Christmas,” he says easily because it’s true. He manages to glance up to find Amy’s eyes already on him from where she sits on his bed, so deep and dark and open he feels like he’s free falling into a chasm with no spark of light.

“Jake,” she murmurs, soft and awed. Jake shrugs as she stands and crosses the room, pulling him into a hug. Over the fall Jake’s started to hit his growth spurt, while Amy’s stayed the same height she’s been since before their birthdays, but he’s still only an inch or so taller than her and she easily rests her chin against his shoulder, wrapping her hands up under his arms and folding them against the middle of his back, drawing him into her warmth. Jake sighs and tries to ignore the sharp sting behind his eyes, instead wrapping his own arms around her biceps, pinning her to his chest, and breathing in the deep cinnamon-vanilla-pinewood scent that clings to Amy and most of his childhood memories.

“You could have told me. You can tell me anything, anytime,” she whispers to his neck. Jake sighs and blinks rapidly, trying to starve off the tears clinging to the bottom of his eyes.

“I know,” Jake mumbles, and he does, he knows he can tell Amy anything, anywhere and anytime. But there’s this bigger part of him that is constantly striving to make Amy laugh, a part that’s becoming nearly impossible to ignore; it’s that part that won, the one that wanted her to enjoy her break without worrying about him.

He doesn’t tell her this though. He just can’t. He’s not actually sure if he ever will. (Maybe he will once he finally understands what exactly her smile and laugh does to him, but definitely not now. Definitely not yet.)

“Are you mad?” Amy’s voice breaks him out of his thoughts. “About him getting married, I mean?” 

Jake is silent for a long moment, trying to make himself sound nonchalant when he answers, but considering Amy tightens her hold on him he thinks that the shaky breaths he is taking aren’t nearly as subtle as he’s trying to make them, “Not really,” he finally admits honestly, his voice coming out all hoarse and crackly. “I’m too tired to be mad.”

Amy makes a soothing nose and scratches lightly at his back, blunt nails comforting through the cotton of his t-shirt.

They stand like that for long moments, Amy breathing deep and soothing, Jake blinking back tears and hurting. They stand like that until the scent of chocolate chip cookies wafts up the stairs and through the closed door of his bedroom and their stomachs rumble in sync. Jake steps back with a laugh and Amy pretends she doesn’t see him wiping at his eyes. She takes his hand in hers and pulls him out of his room and down the stairs to the kitchen where his mom’s fresh cookies sit on the counter, warm and gooey and comforting.

(Jake pretends not to see the long hug Amy gives his mom before she leaves, and he pretends not to feel the way his heart breaks and mends itself in that small moment, and he pretends that anger doesn’t scratch at his stomach when he finds a wedding invitation in the mail a week later, and he pretends that he doesn’t relish the way the water in the pond behind his house soaks the fancy ink from the invitation, and he pretends tears don’t sting his eyes when Amy slips her hand into his as they watch the paper clump and fall apart and drift away and sink, and he pretends and he pretends and he pretends and he pretends—)

 

* * *

 

The setting sun casts deep shadows across the yard. Jake lays sprawled across the blanket with Amy in the shade of the oak tree and their poorly pitched tent, stomachs full of birthday cake and root beer. It’s the first year that Amy’s papá didn’t instruct them at all, didn’t even come out to watch them set it up, just gave them their annual birthday hugs and teasing warnings not to stay up too late. Fireflies hang low in the air, and the chaos of Amy’s house as her brothers wreck havoc inside drifts across the quiet yard, no doubt finishing off the chocolate cake they aren’t supposed to be eating this late.

“I can’t believe Ed’s already left for college,” Amy says, and while her voice sounds bright and happy, there’s something about the spaces between the words and the way she breathes a little more shallow than usual that tells Jake she’s actually sad.

“It’s weird,” Jake agrees, “he’s like a real adult now.” And then he turns to give her a small smile that really means _I miss him too_.

“He still leaves his dirty socks on the floor,” Amy complains, but what she really means is _Thank you_. “Though I do get a room all to myself now.” Jake wonders if she’ll say what she really means or if he should tell her he already knows. “It’s actually kind of lonely,” she finally confesses, and this time she means exactly what she says.

Jake doesn’t really know how to put his comfort into words, so instead he reaches over and rests his hand on her still sun-warm forearm. Amy smiles at him in gratitude and blinks wet eyes until she can shake her sadness off for another day. “I can’t believe we’re going into high school,” she admits.

“I know right?” Jake agrees. “I can’t believe we could get our learners licences today, if we wanted.”

Amy groans, throwing her arms down and resting his Gameboy against her propped up legs. “Ugh don’t remind me. Andrés won’t shut up about it.” Her voice goes low in a mockery of her brother, “ _C’mon, baby Amy, you don’t want to be a loser forever. I can already drive by myself, you big baby_.”

“That was a horrifyingly accurate imitation.”

“Thanks.” Amy’s quiet for a beat. “Do you think we’ll get homeroom together?”

Jake feels Amy’s gaze on him before he hears her turn her head completely towards him. “I don’t know. I hope so.” Amy hums in agreement and Jake looks over and searches her face for a moment, looking for something unknown even to him. “Rosa and Charles had homeroom together and they aren’t fated best friends like us.”

Amy giggles. “Fated, huh?”

Jake nods, mock-serious, and turns to look at her. “Of course. We were falling all over each other just to meet.”

“Oh my God, that was awful,” Amy laughs.

Jake grins at her. “Really? Why thank you. I’ll be here all night.”

Amy giggles again and returns to her Pokémon game and Jake lets the soft music and the warm air soothe him as they sit in comfortable silence, until something starts scratching at his mind, something he’s been thinking about more often than not whenever he’s around Amy.

Jake doesn’t know where he finds the courage, maybe it’s the dusk of the sunset or the sweet breeze or the fireflies lazily hovering above them, but he turns to Amy and asks the question that’s been burning on his tongue for the past three weeks when Charles had blushingly admitted that Genevieve had kissed him when he walked her to the door after their first date. 

“Have you ever kissed anyone?”

Amy squeaks in response and her fingers slip over the buttons of his Gameboy, her head turning just so she can stare and gape at him. “I— You— But— _What_?”

Jake swallows and feels his courage drain down to his toes. “I, uh, I mean— I just— Charles said that Genevieve kissed him and— I mean I just— ‘Cause Gina and Rosa have. Kissed someone, I mean. Not— Not kissed Genevieve. And, uh, I just— I just wondered if, you know, if you had,” he finishes lamely.

Amy’s ears are bright red and her face shines with embarrassment and something brighter and flightier, her eyes darting between his own and to a point somewhere past his ear. She eventually manages to stutter out an “Uh, um, ah,” before she shakes her head in the negative, the movement miniscule.

“Oh,” Jake says, aiming for mild interest but landing somewhere past a loud squeak. “I mean, uh, I haven’t either,” he admits, and Amy’s face wavers between flushed embarrassment and surprise. 

“But Jenny,” she trails off, leaving the question open.

“Fung,” is all Jake responds with, and Amy nods but her eyes still dart between his and the point past his ear. Something deep in Amy’s eyes shifts and settles and Jake is suddenly reminded of how strange Amy had acted the night of his Bar Mitzvah, and the next day, and the next week, and all the way until they got their class schedules and found they shared most of their classes with Gina. Jake remembers the deep ache of confusion when Amy had straight out lied to him, something he’s still never gotten an explanation for, which was followed by the awkwardness of the last week of summer as she tried her best to avoid him, and the disappointment that he shared some class with _Eddie Fung_ but none with Jenny Gildenhorn. Jake hesitates and then clears his throat a couple times and his confusion starts to rush from his mind and aching chest and towards his mouth in what Jake’s sure will be a bewildering series of questions, but when he opens his mouth to speak it’s not at all what he intended to say.

“Maybe we could be each other’s first kiss?” 

Immediately Jake curses himself and feels a flush spread from his cheeks all the way down to his chest. He tries really hard not to acknowledge how his heart pounds and his hands get a little sweaty at his suggestion. Instead he turns his face to the dusky night sky, staring resolutely (and desperately) at the few stars already shinning and ignoring the bright flush to his face.

Amy’s quiet for a long moment, too long, in Jake’s mind, before she gasps a shallow breath and breathes out an almost silent _Okay_ on the exhale.

“Okay? Are you—” Jake pauses to swallow thickly, “Are you sure?”

Amy shuffles her feet against the grass, her legs still bent at the knees and his Gameboy quietly playing Pokémon music where it rests, mostly forgotten, against her thighs. She chuckles nervously and scratches at her ear, her face still flush with embarrassment and that flighty look. “Yeah?” she says confidently, except it comes out quietly and as a question.

“Okay, alright,” Jake mumbles. “Cool cool cool cool, that’s cool. I’m so cool. With it. Cool. The coolest.”

Amy giggles at him even though she’s awkward and embarrassed and skittish and her ears are bright pink too. “Yeah, cool,” she agrees, and then they lay in awkward silence for long moments, not meeting the other’s eyes, before Amy clears her throat. “Maybe we should,” she mumbles, gesturing in the air above her. Jake nods and Amy closes the Gameboy, cutting off the background music until all Jake can hear is the sound of their breathing and the dog barking a couple houses down the street and the quiet chaos of Amy’s house and the pound of his heart in his ears. Jake hadn’t realized how dark it had gotten, only a sliver of the sunset spreading across the backyard and painting Amy’s face in purple shadows and the grass in inky darkness, only broken by the golden rectangle of light slanting across the porch from the dining room window.

They sit up slowly, trying not to seem too eager or anything, and face each other, cross-legged and bare knees knocking together. They swallow in sync and giggle nervously at the motion.

“Um, what should—” Amy asks at the same time Jake says “So, how do—”

They giggle together again, still nervous and flushed. Jake hesitates before taking one of Amy’s hands, his fingers slipping up until he’s circling her wrist. He can feel her heart pound from where his thumb brushes her pulse point, and that makes him feel a little bit better, that she’s as nervous as he is.

“Maybe we should close our eyes,” Amy breathes in a high, flighty voice he’s never heard before. 

Jake swallows a couple times to get his throat working again. “Yeah,” he agrees hoarsely, “But we should, uh, get closer first so, you know, we don’t miss or anything.”

Amy’s eyes are bright, something swimming in their darkness, as they shift closer together, knees pressed more firmly and hands partially tangled between their folded legs. 

“Just, uh,” Amy mumbles, and then the shifting behind her eyes changes and solidifies and she leans forward, and Jake’s too shocked to do anything but let his eyes flutter shut and tilt his face up towards her as he feels her breath, chocolatey and sweet, fan across his face.

He feels her nose before he feels her lips, brushing against his own and settling against his cheek, and then her mouth is pressing, soft and hesitant, over his. It’s just a chaste press of lips, timid and sweet, but as their lips brush it feels like an electric shock jolts through Jake’s body, restarting his heart into a new pattern that beats around something that feels suspiciously like Amy’s smile.

They pull back at the same time, slow and careful, and stare at each other in the warm shadows of dusk that fireflies love best.

“Um,” Amy says softly, her eyes almost glowing in the dark.

“Yeah,” Jake murmurs in awe, and then, before it can get awkward, he whispers, “You’re my best friend.”

“Yeah,” Amy agrees easily, “me too.”

(Jake briefly wonders if all kisses will make his heart pound and his stomach bottom out and something warm bloom in his chest, or if maybe it’s just kisses with Amy that does that.)

(He later learns, over and over and over again, that it’s just Amy. It’s always just Amy.)


End file.
